












:"•■■:.■, >:''.:^i''\J;vJS;'I^:v 





Class 
Book. 



BEQUEST OF 
ALBERT ADSIT CLEMONS 
(Not available for exchange) 



LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV 




MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
Dauphiness of France. 



WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 



Last Years of Louis XV 



BY 



IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND Cbd£uAJ^ 



TRANSLATED BY . , 

ELIZABETH GILBERT MARTIN 

A I 



WITH PORTRAITS 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1901 



^c { s- 



/5^ 



.141 



COPYRIGHT, 1833, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Bequest 

Albert Adsit OlemonS 

Aug, 24, 1938 

'Not available lor exchange) 



THE CAXTON PRESS 
NEW YORK. 



\r- 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Introdtjotiok 1 

FIRST PAET 

THE COURT AND THE CITY AT THE END OF THE 
REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 

CHAPTER 

I. The King 9 

n. The Nobility 15 

in. The Cleegt 18 

IV. The Magistracy 22 

V. The Middle Classes , 29 

VI. The People 34 

VII. Political Women 40 

VIII. Love 45 

IX. The Famous Salons 51 

X. The Philosophers 68 

SECOND PART 

THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES AT THE END OF THE 
REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 

I. Louis XV. in 1768 79 

n. The Beginnings ojf the Countess Du Barry 91 



vi CONTENTS 



OHAPTEE PAGE 

III. The Teiumphs op the Countess Du Baeet 97 

rV. Madame Louise op Fbance, Caemelite Novice . . . 105 

v. The Childhood op Maeie Antoinette 115 

VI. Maeie Antoinette's Aeeival in Feance 125 

VII. The Maeeiagb Eestivities op Maeie Antoinette 135 

VIII. The Dauphiness and the Koyal Family in 1770. 143 

IX. Maeie Antoinette and Madame Du Baeet 149 

X. The Dauphiness and Maeia Theeesa 162 

XI. The Pavilion of Luciennes 177 

XII. The Death op Louis XV 188 

EPILOGUE 

The Scappold op Madame Du Baeet » . . . o 199 



LIST OF PORTRAITS 

Mabib Antoinette Frontispiece 

Madame de Choiseul . . . . ... .66 

Madame du Barry 98 

Louis XV 190 



LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 



INTRODUCTION 

TO live the life of the dead, to study an epoch 
thoroughly, to identify one's self with person- 
ages and become familiar with their habits, ideas, 
passions, tastes, fashions, prejudices, is a sort of 
metempsychosis, an incarnation. To attain it, one 
must isolate himself from his own time, and, for- 
getting that he is himself, must imagine that he is 
another. At first one lends but slight attention to 
the details given by the memoirs of the times to 
which he wishes to transport himself, to the minutise 
of every sort which are only seen as through a glass. 
But after a while, you begin to be captivated by all 
these petty facts, this daily tittle-tattle, and the past 
assumes a second actuality. It seems as if you 
knew intimately the actors in the piece of which 
you are giving yourself a representation. You think 
you hear their voices and watch the play of their 
countenances, and you become the courtier of pal- 
aces, the holder of season tickets to theatres, the 
habitu^ of the salons you are seeking to revive. 

1 



LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 



This is what I should like to attempt for the last 
years of Louis XV., those six years which extend 
from the death of Marie Leczinska to that of the 
sovereign who is no longer styled the Well-Beloved 
except by antiphrasis. A period curious by its 
contrasts, its wavering struggle between the ancient 
regime which is approaching extreme old age, and 
the new which as yet exists only in embryo ! French 
society, regretting nothing of the past, fearing noth- 
ing from the future, advances singing toward the 
abyss. 

I fancy that instead of being an obscure man of 
letters of the nineteenth century, I am a courtier 
of the eighteenth; that I am present at Madame 
Du Barry's triumph, when Madame Louise of France 
takes the veil, and at the rising of that nascent star 
which is called Marie Antoinette. I love Versailles, 
where the monarchy, spite of its decline, has still 
some remaining prestige. But I greatly prefer Paris ; 
Paris, capital of opinion, Paris, city of luxury, intel- 
ligence, pleasures. I live with the philosophers while 
mistrustful of their doctrines, whose bearings they do 
not comprehend well. The courtier of Louis XV. at 
Versailles, I am the familiar of the kings and queens 
of fashion at Paris. I visit the Marquise du Deffand 
without embroiling myself with Mademoiselle de 
Lespinasse. At the house of Madame Geoffrin I 
meet those great nobles, men of wit and taste, who, 
mingling with writers and artists, establish a fusion 
between aristocracy and literature, those foreign 



INTBOBUCTION 



i 



diplomatists who seem ravislied with French, and 
Parisian civilization. I go to those delightful sup- 
pers where one forgets for an instant all that is sad, 
all that is morose, in existence, in order to think 
only of what is amiable and agreeable. When it 
suits me, I dabble a little in politics. When the 
Duke de Choiseul falls into disgrace, I pose as his 
courtier and go to inscribe my name on the Chan- 
teloup column. The quarrels between the magistracy 
and royalty interest me, but I do not take them too 
seriously. 

I see a society divided into two camps : the pes- 
simists and the optimists, those who believe in the 
social peril and those who disbelieve. But the lat- 
ter are in the majority. The former declare that if 
the altar is no longer solid, the throne cannot be so 
either. They regret the Jesuits. They loudly blame 
Voltaire. The future looks black to them. They 
are the prophets of misfortune. 

The second smile if one expresses a fear. When 
they have pronounced the words justice, tolerance, 
equality, liberty, they think they have said all. 
They jeer at the Cassandras predicting public calam- 
ities, at the priests lamenting over unbelief, at Louis 
XV. contemplating with a sort of anxiety the por- 
trait of Charles I., King of England. How could a 
loyal, chivalric nation such as the French make its 
king ascend a scaffold? Is not society every day 
becoming milder, more enlightened, more tolerant? 
Are not the old religious quarrels falling into obliv- 



4 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XY. 

ion ? Is not the nobility placing itself at the head 
of a liberal and generous movement? Are not the 
priests becoming as agreeable as worldly people ? Is 
not instruction making progress daily? When had 
literature more prestige ? When were liberal ideas, 
the taste for useful reforms, civilizing schemes, more 
fashionable? Is not science, which every day real- 
izes new prodigies, uniting itself with philosophy co 
embellish, pacify, and regenerate the human species ? 
And it is such a time as this that people would like 
to signalize as a period doomed to troubles, anarchy, 
sanguinary violence ! " Away, ye tremblers ! " cry the 
philosophers. " Away, retrograde men, who want to 
enchain and degrade humanity! Nothing will im- 
pede the diffusing light! Nothing, no, nothing will 
thwart the irresistible movement which is carrying 
France, and after France all Europe, toward progress, 
toward indefinite, illimitable perfection. Drop these 
pusillanimous arguments, imaginary alarms, infan- 
tine or senile terrors. The phantoms which disturb 
you will not frighten us. Your phantasmagoria 
makes us laugh. It is useless for you to raise your 
voices, and seek to intimidate us by your tragic 
threats and dismal predictions. Away, away, ye 
tremblers ! The world moves ; you will not stop it! " 
I listen to this flow of fine words. But, I own, 
it does not quite convince me. I do not altogether 
believe in the nearness of the age of gold. After me 
the deluge, exclaimed, or so they say, Louis XV. in 
the boudoir of the Du Barry. Louis XV. forebodes no 



INTRODUCTION 



good of the future. Perhaps he is right. And I, 
who am carried away by the vortex of the world, I 
who lead this unquiet, feverish, brilliant life of the 
city and the court, of salons and boudoirs, academies 
and theatres, who go to all the suppers, all the first 
nights, all the entertainments, I, the friend of all 
the great nobles, all the celebrated men, all the 
fashionable beauties, I also, like the old King, have 
my hours of sadness and discouragement. At times 
all these men and women whom I meet seem to me, 
as they do to the old Marquise de Deffand, "machines 
on springs, which go and come, talk and laugh, with- 
out thinking, without reflecting, each playing his 
part by mere custom." Yes, people of the world, 
impassioned on the surface, indifferent at heart, 
malicious conversations which are the aliment of 
jealousy and idleness, insipid gallantry the parody 
of passion, everlastingly renewed discussions on love 
and friendship by persons who have never known and 
never will know anything but the theory of either 
sentiment, artificial, egotistic, glacial combinations 
of the life of salons, there are moments when you 
weary me, when I hold you in horror. There are 
moments when I say to myself: What will this 
philosophic fury result in? What will be built 
upon so many ruins ? What will the throne be with- 
out the altar, the nobility without the clergy ? How 
will this Babel which they call the Encyclopedia 
end? And what real melancholy lies underneath 
this apparent gaiety I What inanity, what wretched- 



LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 



ness ! What bitterness at the bottom of these cups 
of crystal! What thorns among these roses! What 
cares in these powdered heads I Brilliant beauties, 
how your painted cheeks are wrinkling with anxiety I 
Eighteenth century, century so proud of thy wit, 
thine audacity, thy pretended progress, century of 
philosophers, of learned ladies, of noble artists, of 
all-powerful litterateurs, century of Rousseau and 
Voltaire, Diderot and Helv^tius, eighteenth century 
which art approaching thy term, what will thy clos- 
ing years be like ? . . . But I will banish gloomy 
presentiments. I will exclaim with Horace Wal- 
pole : " I laugh, that I may not weep. I play with 
monkeys, dogs, and cats, that I may not be devoured 
by the beast of G^vaudan." Let us taste, then, while 
there still is time, the sweetness of feeling and liv- 
ing. This society which has so many defects, so 
many vices, but also so many charms and attractions, 
let us examine it without complaisance and without 
anger. The court, the city, the nobility, the clergy, 
the magistracy, the middle class, the people, the 
philosophers, the literary men, the artists, the women, 
above all the women, let us watch them filing by in 
turn, the actors and supernumeraries of a comedy 
which will end, and very soon perhaps, in the most 
pathetic and lugubrious of all dramas. . . . The 
new world is advancing. Let us cast a final glance 
at the old one. 



FIRST PART 

THE COURT AND THE CITY AT THE END 
OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 



THE KING 

AT the close of the reign of Louis XV. the court 
is out of fashion. The same etiquette, the 
same names, the same distinctions, are still beheld 
there. But the King is old; what is more, the King 
is ridiculous. His passion for a nobody, a Du Barry, 
has something about it that is absurd and painfully 
grotesque. Versailles no longer makes people trem- 
ble; it makes them smile. They jeer at the amorous 
monarch who is playing a superannuated pastoral 
with a courtesan. No one now takes seriously the 
Well-Beloved of the Almanac^ as he is still ironically 
called. A joker circulated, 1771, the following joa?;^^, 
dedicated to His Most Christian Majesty: "Our 
father who art at Versailles, hallowed be thy name ; 
thy kingdom is overcome, thy will is done no more 
on earth than it is in heaven. Give us our daily 
bread which you have taken from us; pardon your 
parliaments which have upheld our interests, as you 
pardon your ministers who have sold them. Do not 
succumb to the temptations of the Du Barry, but 
deliver us from that devil of a chancellor." 

9 



10 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

The scenery of Versailles is not changed, however. 
The gentlemen on duty fulfil their functions with as 
much assiduity as of old. The King's levee con- 
tinues to be a piece in five acts, where the courtiers 
make their appearance like ballet dancers of the 
highest class. There are always the familiar entries^ 
when the just-awakened King is still in his bed ; the 
grand entries, when he has just risen and is in his 
dressing-gown; then that which is called the entri/ 
of the chamber, when he is in his armchair, in front 
of his dressing-table ; and finally, the general entry, 
that of the stream of courtiers who have been waiting 
since daybreak in the Gallery of Mirrors. Versailles 
is always that city of eighty thousand souls which is 
replenished, peopled, occupied, by the life of a single 
man, that essentially royal city which is marvellously 
arranged so as to provide for the pleasures, the guard, 
the society, and the exhibition of the sovereign. 
The immortal race of courtiers is continually recruited 
by compliant and clever men who, on being pre- 
sented at court, have received and obeyed this coun- 
sel : " You have only three things to do : speak well 
of everybody, ask for ever5d:hing that is not taken, 
and sit down when you can." But, in spite of their 
irreproachable attitude, all these courtiers resemble 
priests who no longer believe in their god. They 
still burn incense at the feet of the idol, as a matter 
of custom, but the idol hardly creates the vestige of 
an illusion. Etiquette, which subsists in all its 
rules and its minutiae, is still in usage, but it is no 



THE KING 11 



longer a religion. Prestige has vanished. One 
cannot find another Dangeau, another De Luynes. 
Money, moreover, that nerve of courts, is becoming 
scarcer. Horace Walpole wrote, July 30, 1771 : — 

"The distress here is incredible, especially at 
court. The King's tradesmen are ruined, his ser- 
vants starving, and even angels and archangels can- 
not get their pensions and salaries, but sing 'Woe! 
woe! woe!' instead of Hosannahs. Compidgne is 
abandoned; Villiers Coterets and Chantilly^ crowded, 
and Chanteloup^ still more in fashion, whither 
everybody goes that pleases; though, when they 
ask leave, the answer is, 'Je ne le defends ni le 
permets.' This is the first time that ever the will 
of a king of France was interpreted against his 
inclination. Yet, after annihilating his Parlia- 
ment, and ruining public credit, he tamely submits 
to be affronted by his own servants. Madame de 
Beauveau, and two or three high-spirited dames, 
defy this Czar of Gaul." 

Walpole is careful to add that there is nothing 
very serious in the opposition of these ladies. "It 
must be said, they and their cabals have as little 
consistency as their party. They make epigrams, 
chant vaudevilles against the favorite, distribute 
pamphlets against Chancellor Maupeou, but all that 
has no more effect than a shot in the air." 

1 Residences of the Duke of Orleans and the Prince of Condg, 
then in disgrace for having taken sides with the former Parliament 
against that of Chancellor Maupeou. 

2 The Duke de Choiseul's place of exile. 



12 LAST YEAB8 OF LOUIS XV. 

To sum up, people still preserve for the King, if 
not affection and respect, — respect and affection 
ceased to exist long ago, — at least a certain indul- 
gence. One excuses this old man as one would 
excuse a spoiled child. He has done harm, but on 
the other hand, he has done good. He has lost the 
colonies, but he has annexed Lorraine and Corsica 
to France. He has resisted powerful coalitions. 
He is the victor of Fontenoy. His aged arm has 
been able to strike the Parliament, and this cowp 
d'Etat puts off the cataclysm for several years. 
Louis XV., devotee and debauchee, dissatisfied with 
others and with himself, a mixture of feebleness and 
energy, of heedlessness and judgment, — Louis XV., 
possessing still a certain dignity, politeness, and 
well-bred calm, a noble and kingly aspect, — Louis 
XV., perhaps still more to be pitied than blamed, 
remains a type of the ancient regime, an incarnation 
of that monarchy which, despite its visible deca- 
dence, has still its vestiges of grace and decorum, of 
force and authority. He is a debauchee. But he 
is in fact neither better nor worse than many old 
Celadons, many veterans of Cythera, many super- 
annuated seducers who would think themselves abso- 
lutely dead if they had no more mistresses. Learned 
magistrates themselves play their pranks. They 
have their little houses, enlarged boudoirs, temples 
of voluptuous pleasure. The epicurean eighteenth 
century is only half displeased with royal debauchery. 
They scoff at it, and the monarchical principle is 



THE KING . 13 



stricken far less by violent attacks than by an arm 
possibly more to be dreaded, — that of ridicule. 
When, at Mass in the chapel of Versailles, I see 
Louis XV. praying very seriously in the royal trib- 
une, not far from his unworthy favorite, who is there 
without rouge or powder, without even having made 
her toilette, I can scarcely keep from shrugging my 
shoulders. 

As to the old King, quite proud of his victory 
over Parliament, he thinks this stroke has assured 
him a long and peaceable old age. In his previsions 
he allots himself several more years of pleasure. 
Then, he tells himself, will come the time of repent- 
ance and penance and true piety, when he will be 
the Most Christian King in more than name. How 
many old men there are who thus put off the hour of 
final conversion, while displaying an interior respect 
for religion very slightly hypocritical! This half- 
piety, this rough sketch of virtue, this penitence in 
the shape of contingent future, we find in many 
souls. What is feebler, more inconsistent, than 
human nature? We elbow men like Louis XV. at 
every step. All, or nearly all, the lady-killers 
resemble the lover of the Du Barry when they grow 
old, and there are few of them who, while still 
retaining their health and plenty of money, consent 
to become hermits, no matter what their age. 

The dominant sentiment with regard to the King 
is not hatred, but indifference. People are going to 
let him die peaceably, and will behold, without anger 



14 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XY. 

and without emotion, the setting of this wintry sun, 
devoid of warmth and radiance. Those who are 
impatient long for a new reign. Those who are 
wiser think the future Louis XVI. too young. After 
all, Louis XV.,- in spite of his errors, faults, and 
vices, is a man of experience, a man of government. 
And when will the Dauphin know anything ? How 
much time does he not need in order to learn the 
most elementary principles of the difficult art of 
reigning? He may have excellent intentions, he 
will be honest and virtuous. But this is not enough. 
The task will be too heavy a one for young shoulders. 
And hence Maria Theresa, that woman of genius, 
that sure-eyed sovereign, fears nothing so much as 
the death of the decried monarch, Louis XV. As 
king if not as man, the old man is still preferable 
to the child. 



II 

THE NOBILITY 

THERE are two parties among the nobles: the 
conservatives and the liberals, the men of the 
past and the men of the future. The first declare 
for the alliance of the throne and the altar, respect 
for all ancient usages, and the absolute maintenance 
of etiquette. Irreconcilable adversaries of philoso- 
phy, Anglomania, and the Encyclopedia, they regard 
the changes in costume, the abandonment of liveries, 
the vogue of foreign fashions, with annoyance and 
contempt. The second, uniting to the advantages 
of patrician rank the convenient charms of indepen- 
dence, joyfully adopt the cabriolets, the frock coats, 
the simplicity of English dress. They applaud re- 
publican tirades at the theatres, the subversive dis- 
courses of the academies, the anti-Christian theories 
of the philosophers. They speak of the old social 
edifice as Gothic architecture. Their rank and 
privileges, the debris of their former puissance, are 
being undermined beneath their feet. What of it? 
This "little war," as Count de Sdgur says, pleases 
and diverts them. They do not feel its attacks as 

16 



16 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

yet; they only see the spectacle. Slaves of fashion, 
they go to pay court to D'Alembert, Diderot, Mar- 
montel, Raynal, a word of praise from whom they 
prefer to the favor of a prince of the blood. Equality 
begins to make its appearance in the world. On 
many occasions, literary tables take precedence over 
those of nobility. In high society one often sees 
second or third rate literary men treated with a 
consideration and attention not obtained by pro- 
vincial nobles. But let no one be deceived — all 
this democratic, almost republican machinery, is as 
yet simply an optical illusion. Ancient usage, as 
the same liberal Count de S^gur again affirms, pre- 
serves between the nobility and the middle classes 
an immense interval which even men of the most 
distinguished talents cross in appearance rather than 
in reality. There is more familiarity than equality. 
The great trees which are unconsciously losing their 
roots are still very proud of their foliage. Family 
splendors, great households, feudal existences, attri- 
butes of power, all seem vivacious and eternal. The 
classes of the old social order, with their hierarchy, 
their luxury, their blazons, their riches and power, 
are like "those brilliant pictures formed of a thou- 
sand colors and traced with sand on the crystals of 
our festivities, wherein one may admire magnificent 
castles, gay landscapes, and rich harvests, which the 
lightest breath would be enough to efface and cause 
to disappear." 

Do not believe, moreover, that the nobility, in 



THE NOBILITY 17 



spite of its decadence, has lost its former prestige. 
No, it is still elegant, loyal, full of courtesy and 
politeness. The most insignificant of the provincial 
gentry preserve their traditions. They have fre- 
quented the salons of the commandant or intendant, 
they have met on a visit some ladies of Versailles. 
Hence they all have some inkling of the changes in 
dress and fashion. "The most uncivilized of them 
accompanies his departing guests, hat in hand, to the 
foot of his front steps, thanking them for the honor 
they have done him. The most clownish, being near 
a woman, furbishes up from the depths of his memory 
some remnant of chivalrous gallantry. The poorest 
and most retired is careful of his coat of 'king's- 
blue ' and his cross of St. Louis so that he may, on 
occasion, pay his respects to the neighboring great 
lord or the prince on his travels." ^ The nobles of 
the court, too futile, dissipated, and Voltairean, must 
not cause us to forget the provincial nobles who live 
quietly, collected, austere, respecting principles, 
usages, and dogmas, enduring an honorable poverty 
without complaint, unwilling to go begging favors at 
Versailles, and preparing in retreat to support nobly 
the storms whose approach they forebode already. 

1 M. Taine, Les Origines de la France Contemporaine. 



Ill 



THE CLEEGY 



JUST as we find in the ranks of aristocracy, at 
the side of a court nobility too often corrupt 
and frivolous, a provincial nobility wbicli guards 
faithfully the traditions of honor and the austere 
virtues, so at the side of worldly prelates there are 
honest, convinced, venerable priests who continue to 
edify the country. In the clergy, as in the nobility, 
I distinguish the rich and the poor, the unbelieving 
and the faithful, the men who give scandal and the 
men of good will. Doubtless there are many reforms 
to make, many abuses to suppress. The princes 
of the Church, possessors of feudal rights, heirs or 
successors of the ancient prince-sovereigns of the 
country, the hundred and thirty-one bishops and 
archbishops, the seven hundred commendatory abbds, 
with their worldly airs, their opulence, their great 
households, are not all models. I could name more 
than one prelate who not only has mistresses, clients, 
guests, a levee, an antechamber, ushers, and ofiQces, 
but who completes his resemblance to the great 
cobles by having debts. The Marquis de Mirabeau 

18 



THE CLEBGY 19 



wrote in 1766: "It would be an insult to offer a 
curacy to the majority of ecclesiastics with preten- 
sions. Revenues and distinction are for commenda- 
tory abb^s, for clergymen who have only received 
the tonsure, for the numerous chapters." There are 
prelates who have an income of half a million. 
People talk of one bishop's hunting-equipage, of 
another's confessionals hung with satin, of the 
kitchen utensils in solid silver belonging to a 
third. In salons and boudoirs I constantly meet 
these court abb^s, who have nothing of the priest 
about them but the habit, and who do not always 
wear that, — anacreontic abb^s, flatterers of great 
ladies, admirers of the philosophers, newsmongers, 
makers of little verses. But these are not the true 
clergy. The true clergy are found in the modest 
presbyteries of towns, and especially of villages. 
Yes, if I know the pompous aristocratic prelate, man 
of the world, man of the salon, man of the court, 
mounting more willingly the marble staircases of 
Versailles than the steps of the altar, I also know 
the humble, poor, resigned priest, the man of devo- 
tion, duty, sacrifice, abnegation, the man of God. 
If I meet the bishop proud of his gold cross, I also 
salute the country curate who goes, staff in hand, 
several leagues on foot through mud and snow. 
Doubtless there are certain convents of women whose 
profane aspect makes them resemble aristocratic 
circles, meeting-places for elegant society. But on 
the other hand there are veritable convents, holy and 



20 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

religious asylums. One of the daughters of Louis 
XV., Madame Louise of France, has become a Car- 
melite, and the Carmelites make no compromise with 
austerity. There exist, I admit it, certain preachers 
more intent on the Encyclopedia than on the Gospel, 
who resemble academicians more than priests. There 
are, I am told, some who forget to make the sign of 
the cross when they enter the pulpit, omit all prayer, 
and turn their sermon into a sort of lecture. 
Bachaumont tells us that this is called preaching d 
la Greek. But, on the other hand, there are ener- 
getic, convinced preachers, in whose eloquent mouths 
the sacred terrors of doctrine are not enfeebled, men 
of faith and courage who, like the Apostles, exclaim 
when confronted with scandal : " It is impossible not 
to speak. Non possumus non loqui. In a piously 
audacious sermon, the Bishop of Alais, dividing 
society into two classes, that which has all and 
that which has nothing, asks why so enormous a 
privilege is excused by so little virtue. One day 
the Abb^ de Beauvais, preaching in the chapel of 
Versailles in presence of the King, censures the 
shameful life of libertines. At the close of the 
sermon, Louis XV., apostrophizing Marshal de Riche- 
lieu, said to the old coxcomb: "Eh! Marshal, it 
seems to me the preacher has been throwing a good 
many stones into your garden." — "Yes, Sire," re- 
turned the sly courtier, "and some of them even 
bounced over into the park of Versailles." Still, 
the evangelical tradition continues in spite of 



THE CLEBGT 21 



everything. Even in the most relaxed, corrupt, 
perverse epochs, there are always hidden treasures, 
inexhaustible sources of charity and virtue, if not on 
the surface at least in the depths of Christianity. 
No, no, messieurs the philosophers, do not confound 
the Church, the holy Church, with certain simoniacal 
priests and contraband abb^s who are her reproach. 
Reckon up how many faithful servants of Christ, 
helpers of the poor, consolers of the afflicted, there 
yet remain in cities and country places, in every 
town and village. True, there have been great 
scandals, abuses from which Christian souls have 
suffered profoundly. Nevertheless, when the hour 
of supreme crisis shall arrive, you will see how many 
priests will know how to die like martyrs, like the 
early Christians. You who think the clergy ended, 
will soon be astonished at the number of its heroic 
and intrepid men. When the tempest comes, you 
will recognize the worth and ability of this clergy. 
You think now that the Church has grown old. 
Well, she will grow young again if need be, in 
persecution. She will have her second baptism, if 
that is necessary, which will efface all stains ; it will 
be the baptism of blood I 



IV 

THE MAGISTEACY 

I SEE the same contrasts in the magistracy as in 
the nobility and the clergy. Beside magis- 
trates of the old stamp, grave, austere, preserving 
the tradition and sentiment of duty, the conscious- 
ness of professional dignity, I encounter with regret 
epicurean and Voltairean magistrates, men of intrigue 
and pleasure, light, superficial, partisans of revolu- 
tionary ideas, preparing unawares the downfall of 
the throne as well as the altar, and not even suspect- 
ing the weight of the blows they are aiming at them. 
It is only in appearance that they uphold justice. 
In reality they are nothing but agents of dissolu- 
tion. They do not even trouble themselves to be 
hypocrites. The same men who break Galas on the 
wheel and decapitate La Barre, place Voltaire's La 
Pucelle on the tables of their drawing-rooms, and are 
the guests and flatterers of materialists and atheists. 
If a book is condemned to be burned, the condemna- 
tion makes the magistrates who pronounce it smile. 
"Injunctions are decried," says Bachaumont, "a 
witticism refutes a sermon, and if Parliament med- 

23 



THE MAGISTBACY 23 

dies witli it, they glory in the honors of the burning. 
It is no longer a punishment, but an advertisement. 
Moreover, do not fancy that the executioner of lofty 
works has permission to throw into the fire the books 
whose names appear in the decree of the court. 
Messieurs would be very sorry to deprive their 
libraries of a copy of each of these works to which 
they have a legal right, and the clerk of the court 
substitutes for them some pettifogging parchments 
of which there is never any lack."^ 

Those members of the judiciary who hold a middle 
rank between the higher nobility and the middle 
classes, who are rich, influential, and allied to the 
most powerful families in France ; those great nobles 
of the robe each of whom has his little Versailles, a 
fine house between court and garden, and who are to 
the magistracy what the prelates are to the clergy ; 
these parliamentary leaders gradually become the most 
redoubtable enemies of the monarchy. Louis XV. 
has them in horror. Ever since the time of Madame 
de Pompadour he has considered them his most dan- 
gerous enemies. " Those long robes and the clergy," 
he said one day to the favorite, " are always at drawn 
swords ; they torment me by their quarrels ; but I 
detest the long robes far the most. My clergy at 
bottom are attached to me and loyal; the others 
would like to tutor me. . . . The Regent was much 
to blame for giving them the right to make remon- 

1 Grimm, Correspondance litteraire, 1770. 



24 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

strances; they will end by ruining the State." — 
" Ah ! Sire," remarked M. de Gontaut, " it is rather 
too strong for petty lawyers to overthrow." — " You 
do not know what they are doing nor what they can 
do," resumed the King ; " it is an assembly of repub- 
licans. Enough of that, however. Things will last 
as long as I do." ^ 

Disorder exists already in the ruling classes. Mon- 
tesquieu has written it : " There are three estates in 
France, the Church, the sword, and the robe. Each of 
them has a sovereign contempt for the two others. " 
One of Louis XV.'s ministers of foreign affairs, the 
Marquis d'Argenson, has foretold what must be the 
certain end of this regime of divisions and perpetual 
conflicts of power. " Who," he writes, " will decide 
this question in the future, to wit, whether despotism 
will increase or diminish in France ? For my part, I 
hold for the advent of the second article, and even for 
republicanism. Louis XV. has not known how to 
govern either tyrannically or like a good republican 
leader; now, here, when one takes neither one r61e 
nor the other, woe to royal authority. . . . The peo- 
ples have grown very fond of parliaments, seeing in 
them the only remedy for the vexations they endure 
from another quarter. All this points to some revolt 
which is smouldering under the ashes." Li 1752 the 
same Marquis d'Argenson had traced these prophetic 
lines : " The bad results of our government by abso- 

1 Memoirs of Madame du Hausset. 



THE MAGISTRACY 25 

lute monarchy have succeeded in convincing France 
and all Europe that it is the very worst kind of govern- 
ment. I do not mean the same thing as the philoso- 
phers, who say that anarchy itself would be prefer- 
able. However, the opinion is growing and making 
its way, and that may bring about a national revo- 
lution." 

A noisy and active revolution is forming itself 
against the Church in the very bosom of Catholicism, 
and against royalty in that of the magistracy and the 
parliamentarian middle classes. A sort of league is 
established between all the parliaments of France, 
which consider themselyes as the different groups of 
a single assembly, the several members of an invisible 
body. Louis XV., energetic at times, awakes from 
his torpor and comprehends the necessity of striking 
a great blow. During the night of January 19, 1771, 
all the members of the Paris Parliament who, through 
a spirit of opposition, were refusing to render justice, 
are arrested in their beds and summoned to give a 
plain yes or no to an order requiring them to resume 
their ordinary functions. They answer no, and are 
sent into exile. The people remain quiet, and the 
dissolved Parliament gives place without resistance 
to the new Maupeou Parliament, so called from the 
name of the chancellor. Louis XV. thinks himself 
more powerful than Louis XIV., the chancellor 
stronger than Richelieu. Madame de Pompadour had 
overthrown the Jesuits. Madame Du Barry has over- 
thrown the parliamentarians ; in other words, the 



26 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

Jansenists. The rival parties, Jesuits and Jansenists, 
having disappeared, would not one suppose that the 
absolute monarchy would remain standing alone 
above their ruins ? But that is merely an optical 
illusion. The Maupeou Parliament is discredited, 
and power sustains it but feebly. It allows the affair 
of Beaumarchais against Counsellor Goezman, — an 
affair so trifling in itself but so important on account 
of the noise it makes, — to take truly incredible 
proportions. The terrible and dramatic Polish ques- 
tion preoccupies Versailles and Paris less than the 
wretched quarrel between the author of the Barber of 
Seville and one of his judges, or rather, the wife of 
one of them. 

"What was it all about? To know whether the 
wife of a counsellor of Parliament had or had not 
kept fifteen louis received from a litigant. Why, 
then, such passion and excitement in the public? 
Why this feverish anxiety, this mad curiosity with 
which all Paris, all France, follows the vicissitudes 
of this trial ? Because the affair is symbolical. What 
is at stake is less the Goezman household than the 
whole Maupeou Parliament. It is the magistracy 
that I see on the prisoner's bench, and not Beaumar- 
chais. It is the accused who, by an inversion of 
r81es, appears as counsel for the King, — what do I 
say ? — as counsel for that new power, opinion. His 
statements are the public prosecutor's speeches. The 
cause is as much political as judicial. The old social 
edifice is cracking and undermined on every side. 



THE MAGISTRACY 27 

All the springs of the old machine are out of order. 
And instead of lamenting over this, the privileged 
classes do nothing but laugh. The Goezman trial is 
a comedy which entertains the boxes as much as it 
does the pit. I am not sure that Louis XV. himself, 
hard as it is to divert him, is not cheered up by it. 
It certainly amuses Madame Du Barry extremely. 
She has charades at her house in which Madame 
Goezman and Beaumarchais are confronted with 
each other. Beaumarchais is the centre of all eyes, 
the fashionable man, the hero of the day. " I am 
afraid," writes Voltaire, "that this brilliant fellow 
may be in the right against everybody. . . . His 
naivetd enchants me "(the nai'vet^ of Beaumarchais !). 
" I forgive him his imprudence and petulance." 

The conclusion of the most serious act or the most 
important treaty of peace would be awaited with less 
impatience than the issue of this trial, which preoccu- 
pies, if one can believe it, both peoples and kings, — 
so entirely does France, in spite of her decline, retain 
in the last years of Louis XV. the privilege of con- 
centrating the attention of all Europe on what is pass- 
ing within her borders. " Judgment at last ! " . . . 
as says the Chicaneau in Racine's Plaideurs. Feb- 
ruary 26, 1774, after seven months of waiting, the 
sentence is pronounced. Madame Goezman is con- 
demned to formal censure (le hldme) and to the resti- 
tution of the fifteen louis, which are to be distributed 
among the poor. Beaumarchais is also condemned 
to censure. Le hldme is not a slight penalty, but 



28 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

an infamous one, a penalty which renders him who 
is stricken by it incapable of fulfilling any pub- 
lic function ; the condemned receives the sentence 
kneeling, in presence of the court, while the presi- 
dent says to him : " The court censures thee and 
declares thee infamous." Well ! the man whom the 
Maupeou Parliament thinks it can thus stamp with 
infamy, is a victor ; all Paris goes to leave cards at 
the house of the condemned man. The Prince de 
Conti and the Duke de Chartres give him a brilliant 
entertainment the day after sentence is decreed. M. 
de Sartines says to him : " One should be modest 
even though one has been censured." The opposi- 
tion, silenced for a moment, starts up anew. A rain 
of pamphlets and diatribes begins against this Mau- 
peou Parliament which, by inflicting civil death on a 
man upheld by public opinion, has given itself a mor- 
tal blow. Its days, like those of the old King, are 
numbered. As to Louis XV., judging Beaumarchais 
from the address just displayed by this clever man in 
the Goezman trial, he intrusts him with a secret mis- 
sion to England. When discordances like these exist 
in any society, catastrophes are not far distant. 



THE MIDDLE CLASSES 

CURIOUS thing! The revolution does not 
start from below, but from above. The classes 
which suffer and are hungry are resigned and 
silent. The privileged classes, those who gorge 
themselves with gold and pleasures in the midst of 
public distress, are those that complain and make an 
uproar. The higher up you go on the social ladder, 
the less faith and virtue do you find. The people 
are better than the middle classes, the middle classes 
better than the nobility, the provincial nobles better 
than those of the court, the lower clergy superior to 
the prelates. One might say that, morality being in 
an inverse ratio to rank, the most dangerous adver- 
saries of society are the very persons who have most 
to lose if it succumbs. The great proprietors are 
demolishing their houses and castles. The prelates 
are sapping the foundations of the churches. The 
princes of the blood are shaking down the throne. 
Thus it is that the so-called defenders of the social 
fortress are spiking their cannons, destroying their 
ramparts, dampening their powder, breaking their 

29 



30 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

weapons, and will end by delivering the key of tlie 
citadel to the enemy, 

A large majority of the middle classes are still 
resisting the inroads of impiety. In Paris and the 
provinces they say : " Without monarchy and the 
Church, no government." In religion and politics, 
even if they are on the side of the opposition, they 
do not go beyond the liberties of the Gallican Church 
and the constitutional guaranties demanded by the 
parliaments. Even though they have ceased to love 
and esteem Louis XV., they continue to respect roy- 
alty in his person. Dignified, calm, reflective, they 
will neither make war on the nobles nor pay them 
court. As to the monarchy, they consider it as a 
dogma, an article of faith. Citizen Regnaud thus 
expresses himself: "It is a law of the State, conse- 
crated in every age by the Divine law, to respect the 
sovereign even when he causes the unhappiness of 
the peoples confided to him by Providence. God 
forbid that I should undertake to infringe this sacred 
law in the history I am writing." ^ 

Another citizen. Prosper Hardy, makes the follow- 
ing declaration in his Memoirs : " Although I have 
never regarded myself as other than an atom in 
society, I think I deserve a distinguished place there 
by my inviolable fidelity to my sovereign and my 
love for his sacred person. The sentiments I imbibed 



1 Manuscript Memoirs of Kegnaud, procureur to the Parliament 
of Paris at the time of the coup d^lStat of 1771. 



THE MIDDLE CLASSES 31 

from books and education will never be effaced from 
my heart. Albeit my fortune, by the will of Divine 
Providence, is of the most modest sort, a prospective 
income of a hundred thousand Sous would not cause 
me to forsake a boon which is dear to me and of 
which I cannot be deprived ; to wit, honor and true 
patriotism. I shall always believe it my duty to 
think concerning the present controversies as the 
first magistrates of the realm do and the princes of 
the royal blood, who have manifested their senti- 
ments toward our august master in a manner as au- 
thentic as respectful, and in a formal protest to which 
no good citizen can avoid paying homage and sub- 
scribing with all his soul." ^ The opposition still 
remained dynastic. It enveloped itself in forms 
most deferential toward the person and authority 
of the sovereign. Hardy blames the ministers for 
the harm that has been done, without accusing 
Louis XV. He complains of despotism, never of 
the King. 

If in the depths of the provinces one finds ancient 
manors and dungeon keeps blackened by time where- 
in dwell austere and worthy nobles, proud of their 
ancestors and their poverty, one also finds, even in 
worldly, frivolous Paris, old houses which shelter 
worthy people, peaceable bourgeois, citizens of their 
quarter, frequenters of their parish church, members 
of their corporation, who still lead a calm and patri- 

1 Manuscript Memoirs of Simeon Prosper Hardy. 



LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 



archal existence. Their life glides uniformly by, 
" developing like a captive stream its predetermined 
course, without ever losing sight of the shadow of 
the natal bell-tower, the church where rest the pious 
souvenirs of the family, and where the same half- 
open tomb awaits the generations. Between this 
ever-present term and this point of dex3arture which 
is drawing near, the regulated forms of professional 
duty take possession of the man, occupy his soul, and 
replenish the capacity of his spirit." ^ 

The religious sentiment is still dominant, even at 
Paris, in the middle classes and the people. In Feb- 
ruary, 1766, Louis XV. is crossing the Pont-Neuf 
after leaving a bed of justice he has just held at the 
Parliament. A priest carrying the Viaticum passes 
in front of the cortege. The King alights from his 
carriage and kneels down. This mark of devotion 
causes enthusiastic admiration in the crowd, and cries 
of " Long live the King ! " resound from every side 
with more than ordinary enthusiasm. 

The citizen class is still Christian and royalist. 
But let no one be deceived. It also threatens to 
become revolutionary. Certain characteristic symp- 
toms are beginning to make their appearance. The 
law clerks sometimes assume the aspect of dema- 
gogues, and a nameless breath of democracy often 
pervades the pits of theatres. I see an impatient 
youth springing up amid the middle classes which 

^ M. Charles Aubertin, U Esprit puUic au XVIII' siecle. 



THE MIDDLE CLASSES 33 

will bring all the turmoil of the new spirit into the 
old settings of a disorganized society. The opposi- 
tion will increase by degrees, coming down from one 
social layer to another, from the princes of the blood 
to the popular masses who are as yet untouched. 



VI 

THE PEOPLE 

DO you see, in country places, a sort of wild 
animal, male and female, "black, livid, and 
scorched by the sun, attached to the earth which 
they dig and turn over with invincible obstinacy? 
They have a kind of articulate voice, and when they 
rise to their feet they show a human face, and in 
fact they are human beings. At night they retire 
into dens, where they live on bread, water, and roots. 
They spare other men the trouble of sowing, labor- 
ing, and reaping in order to live, and thus deserve 
not to lack some of the bread which they have 
sown." 1 

Do you see them, notwithstanding, "in frightful 
misery, without beds or furniture ; the majority of 
them even lacking that bread of oats and barley 
which is their sole nourishment, and which they are 
oblisfed to tear from their own mouths and those of 
their children to pay the taxes " ? ^ Do you see 
" these poor slaves, these beasts of burden fastened 



1 La Bruyfere. ^ Massillon. 

84 



THE PEOPLE 35 



to a yoke, and whipped along "?i These unfortu- 
nates who in years of famine — years which fre- 
quently recur — eat grass like sheep and die like 
flies? Well, if one can believe it, they do not com- 
plain. They do not even think of complaining. 
Their sufferings and privations seem to them as 
natural as winter or the hail. They do not complain. 
"Why not? Because if they have not the bread of 
the body, they at least have hope, the bread of the 
soul. Yes, the hope of heaven, the hope of an ideal 
world which hovers above the real one like a pavilion 
of gold above a filthy sewer, the hope of the true 
country where there are neither fatigues, nor tears, 
nor sorrows, — hope, their support, their consolation, 
their future ; hope, that supreme good which the 
philosophers are determined at any cost to wrench 
from them I What they have left, and what the 
philosophers have no longer, is the sacred poesy of 
the Church, its hymns of sadness and of joy, the 
cycle of its feasts which vary and adorn the year. 
They have the steeple of their native village, the 
graveyard where their parents sleep and where they 
offer prayer, the crucifix, the image of the Man-God 
whose hands and feet and side they kiss while weeping. 
They have what you have not, men of the world and 
free-thinkers : the real good, the inestimable treasure, 
that which subsists entire even when the bell is 
ringing for the dying, that which death itself has 



1 The Marquis d'Argenson. 



36 LAST YEAES OF LOUIS XV. 

no power against : they have faith I The angels of 
Christ hover over each thatched cabin, the angels 
who, when the unfortunates would like to turn away 
from the chalice of bitterness, induce them to drink 
it calmly and with resignation even to the dregs I 

Great lords and ladies, adepts of the Encyclopedia, 
savants and literary men, be careful! You mock, 
perhaps, at these poor people. You criticise what 
you call their ignorance, because they still worship 
as of old, because, in their simplicity, on All Saints' 
Day they lay a plate for the dead on their wretched 
tables. You deride them because when they have 
saved a few farthings they spend them, — for v/hat ? 
In order to burn some candles. Take care, — if they 
did not burn these candles which you sneer at, they 
would burn your houses, your castles. Don't flout 
these people who are and have little or nothing, who 
are the majority, and who would only have to crowd 
together in order to stifle you. Great philosophers, 
why do you not try to make your discoveries contrib- 
ute somewhat to preserve that sacred object, the 
human soul, to wrest it from misery and cast it, con- 
soled, pacified, elevated, into the bosom of God ? Ah ! 
why do you belong to that frightful race of men who 
injure souls? Why do you discourage the cabin 
where men die of hunger, the workshop where the 
proletarian, become a wheel of flesh in a machine, can 
no longer breathe the air of God nor be illumined by 
His sunshine ? Take care ! Take care ! What will 
become of you on the day when these poor people 



THE PEOPLE 37 



say to you, nobles : " You are men like others " ; to 
you, prelates : "You are impostors." Take care! if 
your impious doctrines triumph, here are the work- 
men, the peasants, all the disinherited of fortune, 
who will cry to you in terrible voices : " No more 
resignation, vengeance ! No more tears. Muskets, 
and if there are no muskets, pikes ! And if there are 
no pikes, clubs ! Enough of docility ! Enough of 
patience ! Enough of humility ! Come on ! " Mad- 
men ! Fools ! It is you who have just said to them : 
" Poor wretch, you are awaiting life eternal to find 
at last a compensation for your sufferings. There is 
no eternal life. Poor wretch, you are amassing as if 
there were savings, your tears and sorrows, and those 
of your wife and your children, in the hope of bring- 
ing them after death to the foot of God's judgment 
seat. Well, there is no God ! " Admirers of Hel- 
v^tius. Baron d'Holbach, Diderot, great philosophic 
nobles, be on your guard! on the day when your 
unbelief shall have spread beyond your salons, your 
boudoirs, and academies, into the cabins of your 
peasantry, tremble, for that day will be the ven- 
geance of heaven ! 

It is the people they lose sight of, and it is they 
above all who should never be forgotten. It is in 
them that a strong and intelligent royalty finds its 
fulcrum, its natural authority, and its moral prestige. 
It is the people who give their sweat and blood with- 
out a murmur. It is the people who in times of peace 
and times of war, in cities and country places and 



38 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

on battle-fields, utter enthusiastically and with all the 
force of their robust lungs, the cry which sums up the 
unity of the country, the cry of loyalty and patriot- 
ism: Long live the King! Reforms are necessary. 
But it is not a Voltairean nobility and a magistracy 
honeycombed by the spirit of rebellion which can 
cause order and liberty to triumph. It is not a middle 
class which, after all, represents only a feeble minor- 
ity. No. It is the people taken as a whole, that is 
to say the entire nation, which can be counted on for 
the work of true progress. The sovereign reformers 
have always relied on the people, not on the privi- 
leged classes. This is what is forgotten in the apart- 
ments of Versailles. People busy themselves with 
the surface of society, not with its depths. They 
think too much about the houses of the Faubourg 
Saint Germain, about academies, salons, castles, pal- 
aces of justice, and not enough about the garrets and 
thatched cabins, the devout and honest masses who 
would be such a powerful rampart for majesty 
against the invasions of a revolution half aristo- 
cratic, half middle class. There would be the reju- 
venescence and the future of the monarchy. The 
King should appear, not merely to the ruling 
classes, but to the mass of his subjects, as a pro- 
tector, friend, and father. Louis XV. does not 
remember often enough that of all classes of soci- 
ety in the eighteenth century, the best, most worthy, 
most patriotic, is that of the poor, the humble, the 
workmen, peasants, and laborers. Among them is 



THE PEOPLE 39 



found the basis of honesty, industry, and piety, the 
compensation for the scandals of the court and the 
city, beautiful souls under rude envelopes. There, if 
royalty comprehended the situation, it would find the 
consolidation of the throne and the welfare of the 
country. 



VII 

POLITICAL WOMEN 

AT Versailles, Paris, and throughout the realm, 
the women are playing a part which constantly 
increases in importance. At Versailles they domi- 
nate Louis XV. and his ministers ; at Paris they are 
the recognized arbiters of fashion, literature, and 
the arts. Throughout the realm they avenge them- 
selves for the Salic law. In 1770 Coll^ wrote in his 
Memoirs : " The women have taken the upper hand 
so completely among the French, they have subju- 
gated the men so completely that they no longer 
think or feel except in accordance with them." Not 
all the influential women are coquettish, light, 
superficial, the women of Marivaux. Some of them 
are frivolous, but others are serious. There are 
religious women, mothers in Israel, friends of the 
Jesuits, irreconcilable enemies of the Encyclopaedia — 
such women as the Princess de Marsan, who in 
association with Madame de Talmont, Madame de 
Noailles, and the Duke de Nivernais, directs what 
is called the devout party. There are philosophical 
women, eaten up by the new fanaticism of irre- 

40 



POLITICAL WOMEN 41 

ligion, who plunge head foremost, with all the en- 
thusiasm and passion of their sex, into the abyss of 
novel doctrines. There are scientific women, who 
assimilate with curious facility the surface of the 
most arduous sciences, and manage a compass as 
easily as a fan, who place dictionaries of natural 
history and treatises on physics and chemistry in 
their boudoirs beside a little altar dedicated to 
Benevolence or Friendship, and who no longer have 
themselves painted as alluring goddesses on clouds, 
but as grave and meditative muses sitting in a labo- 
ratory amidst squares and telescopes. There are po- 
litical women, pupils of Rousseau, admirers of the 
Contrat Social^ who dream of being the Egerias of 
future Numas, of changing their armchairs into 
tribunes, and their salons into clubs, who ardently 
praise the parliamentary system of the other side of 
the Channel, and declaim like good citizenesses — 
the word begins to be in fashion — against the 
excesses and turpitudes of the absolute regime. 
They want to pass for energetic women (energy is 
another word becoming acclimated in the language 
of high society). They pose as patricians of 
ancient Rome, impassioned for liberty. Grave 
accents proceed from their delicate mouths. Elo- 
quent protests against despotism issue from the 
depths of boudoirs hung with satin. These liberal 
great ladies, a new type in French society, make 
Gustavus III. of Sweden the confidant of their 
wrath against Louis XV. Read the letters of the 



42 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

habitual correspondents of the Swedish monarch, 
Mesdames d'Egmont, de La March, de Croy, de 
Boiifflers, de Mesmes, de Luxembourg, and see with 
what vigor of thought and vehemence of style these 
ladies express themselves.^ 

The beautiful and spiritual Countess d'Egmont, as 
grave as her father, Marshal de Richelieu, is frivo- 
lous, a charming woman, fated to an early death, 
whose melancholy and whose sufferings inspire such 
interest, how violent, bitter, indignant, is her language 
concerning the Du Barry's aged lover ! " How can 
one endure," she writes to Gustavus, "that he who has 
enjoyed the celestial happiness of being passionately 
adored, and who would still be so if he had left us 
the least illusion, should please himself by destroying 
every one of them and look on such a change with 
coolness ? " Again she writes to the King of Sweden, 
June 27, 1771 : " Sire, they say you have asked for a 
portrait of Madame Du Barry. They even go so far 
as to say that you have written to her. I have denied 
it at all events ; but it has been maintained against 
me so positively that I entreat you to authorize me 
to deny it again. . . . No, that could not be." And 
November 26, 1771 : " I ask again for an answer 
about Madame Du Barry's portrait. Deign to give 
me your word of honor that you have not and never 
will have it, for I am greatly pressed to offer you 
mine." Madame de Boufflers wrote such sentences as 

1 Gustave III. et la cour de France, by M. A. Geffroy. 



POLITICAL WOMEN 43 

these to Gustavus : " Absolute power is a mortal 
disease, which by insensibly corrupting the moral 
qualities, ends by destroying states. . . . The 
actions of sovereigns are submitted to the censure of 
the universe. . . . France is ruined if the present 
administration lasts." 

The Countess de La Marck draws this picture of 
society in a letter to the King of Sweden : " Our 
young women are bursting with wit; as for reason, 
it is hardly mentioned. They are all initiated into 
State secrets, they meddle with everything, and 
make love by way of pastime. . . . Certain bureaus 
of wit where people mock at God and religion, and 
consider those who believe imbeciles, such, in short, 
Sire, is a sketch of our situation. No more emula- 
tion, no more principles ; even to the theatres every- 
thing is going wrong. "We still have one or two 
sculptors and three or four painters. The jeweller's 
trade prospers of course ; but it will soon come to a 
standstill, for no one buys anything now but brill- 
iants ; to be sure, they do not pay for them. In a 
word, we are as low down as we can get, and shall 
be lucky if no one attacks us, for I do not know what 
would become of us." 

The impulse is given. Henceforward the women 
will be in opposition to power. It is the current ; 
one must go with it. The principal salons of Paris 
are so many clubs hostile to the King. Politics in- 
vades everything. Besenval says : " Assemblies of 
society and pleasure have become petty States-Gen- 



44 LAST TEAMS OF LOUIS XV, 

eral, where the women, transformed into legislators, 
lay down maxims on public law and settle principles 
with the audacity and assurance imparted by the 
wish to dominate and m.ake themselves observed, a 
desire heightened still further by the importance of 
the matter and its celebrity. . . ." It must not be 
believed, however, that the majority of these eloquent 
stateswomen, descanting at random on the respective 
rights of the throne and the magistracy, on absolute 
power and liberty, renounce on that account the 
ways and habitudes of coquetry, of what is called 
love. Suspect these women, serious only in appear- 
ance. Politics is the pretext. The gist of the 
business is gallantry. 



VIII 

LOVE 

OF all loves, the rarest in high society under the 
reign of Louis XV. is conjugal love. Well- 
bred married couples are on the footing of polite and 
courteous strangers with each other. The husband 
calls his wife Madame. The wife calls her husband 
Monsieur. They live in the same house, but have 
separate apartments and do not visit each other with- 
out being previously announced. Never do they ride 
in the same carriage. Never are they met in the same 
salon. A husband who should follow his wife would 
be treated as a jealous provincial. A woman who 
should have the singular idea of being in love with 
her husband would be thought ridiculous. Such a 
passion in good society would be indecorous. Con- 
jugal love is altogether out of fashion. Baron de 
Besenval considers that though morals may suffer 
from this, society is an infinite gainer, adding that, 
" freed from the embarrassment and chill always 
caused by the presence of husbands, there is extreme 
liberty," and that " the coquetry of men and women 
maintains its vivacity and daily supplies piquant 

adventures." 

45 



46 LAST YEAES OF LOUIS XV. 

Piquant adventures are what is specially sought 
for. Passion, people care little about ; what they are 
looking for is pleasure. Listen to a great lady say- 
ing, in 1764, to young Lauzun, the future Lovelace, 
whose erotic education is not yet quite finished: 
"Believe me, little cousin, to be romantic doesn't 
succeed nowadays ; it makes you ridiculous, and then 
it is all up with you. I have had a great fancy for 
you, my child ; it is not my fault if you have taken 
it for a grand passion and persuaded yourself that it 
would never end. What does it matter to you, if 
this fancy is over, whether I take one for somebody 
else or remain without a lover? You have many 
advantages for pleasing women ; use them for that 
purpose, and rest assured that the loss of one can 
always be repaired by another, — that is the way to 
be happy and amiable." ^ Such was fashionable mo- 
rality. Chamfort defined love as " the exchange of 
two fantasies and the contact of two skins." People 
take and leave each other in precisely the same way. 
As Prince de Ligne said, one was happy to have, one 
was enchanted to have no longer. 

Where is the time of profound passions, trembling 
avowals, of sighs and tears and fond despairs? 
Where is the time of heroic loves with their chival- 
rous respect, their long waiting, sublime devotion, 
eternal oaths, their tried devotion and tender grati- 
tude, their virtues of grandeur and generosity ? Look 

1 Memoirs of the Due de Lauzun. 



LOVE 47 

at the Cupid of the reign of Louis XV., the noisy, 
insolent, victorious Cupid, who scoffs at the love of 
former times as a malicious and ill-bred child mocks 
at an old man. Listen to him saying in a gibing 
tone : " Your lovers were mere blockheads, who only 
knew how to languish, say alas ! and tell their troubles 
to the surrounding echoes. For my part, I have sup- 
pressed the echoes. . . . My subjects do not say : I 
am dying ; nothing is half so much alive as they are. 
Languors, timidity, sweet martyrdom, are out of the 
question ; all that is tame, a platitude of other days. 
... I don't put my subjects to sleep ; I wake them 
up ; they are so keen that they have no leisure to be 
tender ; their glances are desires ; instead of sighing, 
they attack ; they do not say : Be propitious to me ; 
they seize, and that is what is needed." ^ Listen to 
Madame d'Epinay, who speaks of modesty as a " beau- 
tiful virtue which one fastens on with pins." Listen 
to the century which boasts, like Crebillon the 
younger, of " having arrived at the truth of things," 
of having suppressed what it calls "exaggerations, 
affectations, grimaces." Do you see, in the picture 
of La Chemise Unlevee, Fragonard's little love who 
smilingly carries off the decency of woman? Do 
you hear Buffon himself, the grave, majestic Buffon, 
employing this materialistic language ? " Why does 
love create the happy estate of all creatures and the 
misery of man ? It is because only the physical side 

1 Marivaus, La BHnion des Amours, 



48 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

of this passion is good; because the moral side is 
good for nothing." ^ 

Hence it is an understood thing, proclaimed by the 
great savants of the century, that the prime essential 
is to suppress the moral part of love. Love is no 
longer represented except under the image of a pretty 
little naked god, flying about, and free. The enemies 
of constraint and waiting form a sect called the anti- 
ceremonious. Another aphrodisiacal corporation en- 
titles itself the Society of the Moment. To choose the 
moment well is the tactics, the supreme art. " How 
many liaisons begin briskly by insolence in a carriage 
the coachman of which is particular about taking the 
longest road, to play deaf and to make the horses go 
slowly. The brutal style of gallantry ends by having 
principles, a sort of philosophy and means of excus- 
ing itself. ... It finds wits to decide that a tem- 
erarious man has at bottom more deference for the 
woman than a timid one and really respects her more 
by sparing her the long torment of successive conces- 
sions." 2 To the lover who remains on his knees too 
long, the eighteenth century cries : " Get up, and take 
your mistress in your arms." 

It is very perverted, very frivolous and guilty, this 
society of the time of Louis XV. They are very im- 
moral, these gay grand ladies, these jtiainczewwes of 



1 Buffon, Discours sur la nature des animaux. ^ 

2 Messrs. de Goncourt, L'' Amour au XVIII^ Steele, a very witty 
and pleasant volume. Dentu. 



LOVE 49 

libertinage, wlio love scandal for scandal's sake, and 
take a haughty pleasure in the loss of their reputa- 
tion. Nevertheless, we must do them the justice of 
admitting that for the most part they retain, amid all 
their disorders, a quality lacking to many fashiona- 
ble beauties in democratic times, — disinterestedness. 
One asks of the grand ladies of the eighteenth century, 
if not the virtues of the honest woman, at least her 
qualities. In the high society of these times love is 
immoral, indecent, full of effrontery, but still there 
is love. Doubtless it is not the lofty, magnanimous, 
inspired love of the heroines of the great Corneille 
or the tender Racine. It is not the ideal passion, 
purified by the spirit of sacrifice, by the ardent 
flame of enthusiasm. No, it is no longer that love. 
Nevertheless, it is still love, or, if it is so in appear- 
ance only, at least it is not a vile traffic. 

Let us add, in order to be fair, that towards the 
close of the reign the level of sentiment begins to 
rise a little. The Nouvelle-Heloise has created some- 
thing new in the erotic manners of France ; and if 
this novelty is at times declamatory, one cannot 
avoid recognizing also that it has a touch of spirit- 
uality. 

No one now approves this remark of Buffon's : " Man 
in desiring to base himself on sentiment simply 
abuses his being and hollows out in his heart a void 
which nothing is able to replenish." The fashion has 
changed. The affectation of passion has been substi- 
tuted for that of indifference. The man of sensibil- 



60 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

ity, the lover to excess, makes his appearance in the 
isle of Cythera. Sensibility is the watchword, the 
word which expresses everything. In a gathering at 
the house of the Duchess de Chartres, the Countess 
de Blot declares "that unless of superior virtue, a 
woman really sensitive could refuse nothing to the 
passion of Rousseau." Irony, scepticism, were once 
the rule, but now it is enthusiasm. Declarations of 
love are either philosophic theses or tragic tirades. 
Every lover is an actor who declaims his part with 
emphasis, with attitudes, inflections of voices and 
attitudes studied beforehand. Henceforward the 
salon stage is monopolized by comic lovers, practised 
Don Juans, virtuosos of sentiment. " Before every- 
thing else they seek their own applause and are 
prouder to make their exit content with themselves 
than content with the woman. There are some who 
falsify their whole person, who paint their faces, un- 
powder their hair, who deprive themselves of wine in 
order to grow pale, and all in the hope of moving and 
affecting. There are even some who for a decisive 
rendezvous put on despair as one would put on 
rouge ; they simulate the marks of half-dried tears 
on their cheeks with diluted gum arable." ^ They 
boast of returning to nature, of admiring the country, 
of being compassionate and humane. Formerly it 
was the negation of love, now it is the parody of it. 

^ Messrs. de Goncourt. 



IX 

THE FAMOUS SALONS 

THE principal salons of Paris are celebrated 
throughout all Europe. They lead the fashion. 
They are the arbiters of style. In them the women 
are sovereigns, guiding conversation and conse- 
quently opinion. The old style becomes the elegant 
interpreter of new ideas. What strikes one first of 
all in fashionable life at the close of Louis XV. 's 
reign is the increasing intimacy between the nobles 
and the men of letters. " The haughty Mardchale de 
Luxembourg always chooses La Harpe as her cava- 
lier; he gives his arm so well, in fact. Not onl}?- 
does the plebeian enter the salon if he has good 
manners, but he lords it there if he has talent. The 
first place in conversation and even in public consid- 
eration is for Voltaire, the son of a notary; for 
Rousseau, the son of a clockmaker; for D'Alembert, a 
foundling picked up by a glazier. " ^ Walpole consid- 
ers that literature is taking up too much space in 
familiar conversation. "Literature is an excellent 

1 M, Taine, Origines de la France contemporaine. 
51. 



52 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

amusement," he writes, "when one has nothing bet- 
ter to do; but in society it becomes pedantry, and is 
tiresome when paraded in public. The authors one 
meets everywhere are worse than their books, which 
is complimentary to neither. Usually the tone of 
conversation is solemn and pedantic, and people 
hardly seem to be amused unless they are disputing." 
This judgment is a trifle severe. After all, from the 
worldly point of view, it is still Paris which holds 
the sceptre, and foreign princes on their travels 
esteem it an honor to enter these salons whose 
prestige and brilliancy are universal. 

The Mar^chale de Luxembourg, whose first hus- 
band was the Duke de Boufflers, the heroine of the 
famous chanson, — 

" Quand Boufflers parut k la cour, 
On crut voir la mere d' Amour ; 
Chacun s'empressait a lui plaire, 
Et chacun I'avait a son tour," ^ — 

the Mar^chale de Luxembourg settled down as she 
advanced in years. "Aided by a great name, plenty 
of audacity, and especially by a fine house, she has 
succeeded in making people forget her light conduct 
and has established herself as sovereign arbiter of 
decorum, good taste, and those forms which make up 



1 When Boufflers appeared at court, 
People thought they saw the mother of Love; 
Every one was eager to please her, 
And every one did so in his turn. 



THE FAMOUS SALONS 63 

politeness. Her empire over young people of both 
sexes is absolute. She restrains the giddiness of the 
young women, forces them to a general coquetry, and 
obliges the young men to be prudent and respectful ; 
in fine, she maintains the sacred fire of French 
urbanity; at her house the tradition of noble and 
easy manners which all Europe comes to Paris to 
admire and strives in vain to imitate, is strictly 
preserved. Never was a Roman censor more useful 
to the morals of the republic than the Mar^chale de 
Luxembourg has been to the charm of society."^ 
By wit and authority, by making herself listened to, 
and especially by making herself feared, the Mar^- 
chale has ended by inspiring more than consideration ; 
to wit, respect. She exerts over the aristocratic, and 
even over the literary world, a redoubtable and 
despotic domination. A presentation at court no 
longer suffices. One must also be received by Ma- 
dame the Mar^chale de Luxembourg. Jean Jacques 
Rousseau himself, the irascible, morose Jean Jacques, 
is fascinated, as it were, by this veritably great lady. 
"Hardly had I seen her," he writes, "when I was 
subjugated. I found her charming, with that charm 
which is proof against time, the one most calculated 
to act upon my heart. I was expecting to find her 
conversation caustic and full of epigrams. It is not 
that, but something much better. The conversation 
of Madame de Luxembourg does not sparkle with 

1 Duke de Levis, Souvenirs et portraits. 



54 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

wit. It has no sallies, and strictly speaking no 
subtlety, but it has an exquisite delicacy which never 
strikes and always pleases. Her flatteries are all the 
more intoxicating the simpler they are. One would 
say they escape her unawares, and that her heart 
overflows simply because it is over-full." 

Another superior woman whose salon is an aristo- 
cratic and intellectual centre of the first order, firstly 
at Paris and Versailles and afterwards at Chanteloup, 
is the clever and virtuous Duchess de Choiseul, wife 
of the celebrated minister. " At a time when each 
coterie has its philosopher, who is as it were its 
director, Madame de Choiseul thinks for herself. 
Neither the irony of Voltaire nor the declamations of 
Rousseau disturb her sound sense and correct intel- 
ligence. She judges men and things sanely without 
permitting herself to be carried away by fashion or 
prejudice. One always finds in her an instructive 
taste for the grand and the beautiful. Hers is a 
noble nature, lovable at first sight, and in which one 
discovers every day some motive for loving it more." ^ 

The Duchess de Choiseul will never be Rousseau's 
dupe. "He preaches a good morality," she writes 
concerning the author of the Nouvelle-HSloise, "a 
morality which we were acquainted with, for that 
matter, because there is but one; but he has drawn 
suspicious and dangerous conclusions from it, or has 



1 Prosper M6rim.6e, article in the Moniteur Universel of April 
29, 1867. 



THE FAMOUS SALONS 55 

put us in a position to do so by the way in which 
he has presented them. Always suspect metaphysics 
applied to simple things ; happily for us, nothing is 
more simple than morality, and what is truest in 
this matter is what is nearest to us. Do nothing to 
another that you would not have him do to you. 
Everybody knows that, every one understands that. 
. . . There is no need of fine dissertations on moral 
good and evil, the origin of passions, prejudices, 
manners, etc., and the rest of that fine rigmarole 
with which these gentlemen fill the journals, the 
shops, and our libraries, in order to teach us what 
virtue is." 

The Duchess de Choiseul considers Rousseau 
equally dangerous as a moralist and as a political 
publicist. "I admit," she adds, "that errors must 
necessarily creep into prejudices, as abuses do into 
laws ; but to wish to destroy everything in order to 
correct them is as if one wanted to cut off a man's 
head to rid him of a few white hairs. . . . The 
employment of wit at the expense of public order 
is one of the greatest villainies. . . . That sort of 
crime is a seed, it is positively the bad grain of the 
Gospel. A true citizen would serve his country as 
best he could by his wit and talents, but would not 
go to writing about the social compact so as to make 
us suspect the legitimacy of governments and over- 
whelm us with the weight of chains which we had 
not felt as yet." Madame de Choiseul thus con- 
cludes this fine letter of July 17, 1766: "I have 



66 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

always been suspicious of this Rousseau, with his 
singular systems, his extraordinary accoutrement, 
and his chair of eloquence resting on the roofs of 
houses. He has always seemed to me a charlatan of 
virtue." 

The Duchess de Choiseul is a type as venerable as 
sympathetic. If one suffers at beholding a Madame 
de Boufflers, the idol of the Temple, doing the honors 
of Prince de Conti's house, conjointly with Made- 
moiselle Auguste, the danseuse of the Opera, or a 
Marechale de Mirepoix sitting on the front seat of 
Madame de Pompadour's carriage, and afterwards on 
that of Madame Du Barry, one is happy at meeting a 
woman worthy of her rank and fortune, a woman 
who, everywhere and always, gives the example of 
what is good, beautiful, and true. There is such 
purity in her whole existence, such virtuous and 
simple grace in her pleasing person, such a great 
mind in her little body.^ "The Duchess of Choiseul 
is not very pretty," writes Horace Walpole, "but has 
fine eyes, and is a little model in waxwork, which 
not being allowed to speak for some time as incapa- 
ble, has a hesitation and modesty, the latter of which 
the Court has not cured, and the former of which is 
atoned for by the most interesting sound of voice, 
and forgotten in the most elegant turn and propriety 
of expression. Oh! it is the gentlest, amiable, 
civil little creature that ever came out of a fairy 



See M. Grasset's fine study, Madame de Choiseul et son temps. 




DUCHESSE DE CHOISEUL AND MADAME LA MARQUISE DU DEFFAND. 



THE FAMOUS SALONS 57 

The salons of tlie Mar^chale de Luxembourg and 
the Ducliess de Choiseul are above all aristocratic 
circles. From the literary point of view, the three 
principal salons of Paris are those of Madame Geof- 
frin, the Marquise Du Deffand, and Mademoiselle de 
Lespinasse. The first is situated in the rue Saint- 
Honore, the second in the rue Saint-Dominique, in 
a small house belonging to the Convent of Saint 
Joseph,^ the third in the rue de Bellechasse. 

Madame Geoffrin's power is a sign of the times. 
Does this very influential woman belong to the 
nobility? No. She is of very obscure birth. What 
is her husband ? One of the founders of the manu- 
factory of glass, a very rich but very ugly com- 
moner, and so far as cleverness goes, a nullity. It 
is pretended that one of the lady's friends, returning 
to her one day after a rather long absence, said to her 
in speaking of her recollections: "But what has 
become of that old gentleman who always sat at the 
end of the table and never said anything to any- 
body? " — "Ah!" respofided Madame Geoffrin, 
"I know whom you mean. . . . He is dead." — 
" Really ! And who was he, then ? " — " My husband. " 
Is Madame Geoffrin literary ? Not the least in the 
world. She is ignorance itself. She does not even 
know how to spell. Apropos of instruction she 
says: "I have got along so well without it that I 
have never felt the need of it." Very well! at the 

1 Now the Ministry of "War. 



68 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

close of Louis XV. 's reign this commoner, Avithout 
youth, 1 beauty, talent, or education, this old woman 
who would have passed unnoticed at another epoch, 
is one of the principal authorities of France, one of 
the sovereigns of opinion. Her salon, celebrated 
throughout Europe, may be considered one of the 
institutions of the eighteenth century. The greatest 
nobles pay court to her. Even crowned heads render 
her a real homage. When, in June, 1766, she goes 
to visit her friend, I might almost say her protege, 
Stanislas Poniatowski, King of Poland, her visit is 
considered by all the courts as a political event. 
The King receives her at Warsaw as a mother, with 
all imaginable respect, joy, and tenderness! At 
Vienna the Empress Maria Theresa overwhelms her 
with courteous attentions. A princess of the blood 
would not receive a more flattering welcome. The 
Czarina Catherine II. takes pleasure in writing 
affectionate letters to her, and values this correspon- 
dence most highly. Why was this prodigious suc- 
cess, this exceptional importance, accorded by France 
and foreign countries to a woman who must herself 
have been astonished at playing such a part ? Why ? 
Because Madame Geoffrin has had the talent to 
create by herself a literary salon, because artists and 
authors have dined and supped with her, because 
she is one of the stockholders of the Encyclopedia, 
because she has probably contributed more than any 

1 She was born in 1699. 



THE FAMOUS SALONS 59 

other person to the establishment of a real sympathy 
between the two aristocracies of birth and talent. 
Such a vogue as hers is always susceptible of some 
explanation. Madame Geoffrin understands better 
than any one else how to manage the difficult, vain, 
irritable race of artists and men of letters ; she has, 
if not wit, at least a great deal of tact, finesse, 
cleverness, blended with good-nature.^ "Madame 
Geoffrin's manners," says Baron de Gleichen, "may 
be compared to La Fontaine's style. There is a good 
deal of art in them, but this art is not apparent. 
Everything in her seems very ordinary, and yet no 
one could equal her by trying to imitate her. Every- 
thing in her house is well arranged, easy, commo- 
dious, useful, and simple. Her bourgeois tone and 
common language impart a certain piquancy to a 
discourse full of wisdom and good sense." Horace 
Walpole is also an admirer of this woman who excels 
in the art of holding a salon. He writes to Lady 
Hervey, October 13, 1765: "Madame Geoffrin is a 
marvel of good sense, good information, good advice, 
and timeliness. She has a way of finding fault with 
you which charms me. Never in my life have I seen 
a person who can so quickly seize the defects, vani- 
ties, and deceits of any one, who explains them to 
one with such precision, nor who had the art of con- 
vincing one so easily. I have never liked being 

1 See the excellent introduction by M. Charles de Morey prefaced 
tb the Correspondance du roi Stanislas, Auguste Poniatowski et de 
Madame Geoffrin, a very interesting volume, published by Plon. 



60 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

corrected to my face. Well! you cannot imagine 
what pleasure I find in it with, her; I take her both 
as confessor and director, and begin to believe that 
in the end I shall become a reasonable creature, 
which I have never had any pretension of being. 
The next time I see her I think I shall say : O com- 
mon sense, seat yourself there! ... If she could 
give herself the trouble, I assure you, Madame, she 
would govern me like a child." 

The rival salon to that of Madame Geoffrin is that 
of the Marquise Du Deffand. Madame Du Deffand 
is as much a great lady as Madame Geoffrin is a 
commoner. Madame Du Deffand is as learned as 
Madame Geoffrin is ignorant. While one does not 
know how to spell, the other writes as well as the 
most illustrious authors. Both are old at the time 
when their salons exercise a preponderating influence 
at Paris. They are of nearly the same age. Madame 
Geoffrin was born in 1699, Madame Du Deffand in 
1697, a year later than Madame de S^vign^, whose 
tradition she was to continue and to repeat her 
glory. The Marquise Du Deffand is not merely old ; 
she is blind. Her eyes, once so beautiful, which had 
made, people say, so many ravages, are extinct. 
But, lacking the «yes of the body, she has those of 
the spirit, and with those she sees everything. Sit- 
ting, day and night, in that famous armchair which 
she calls her tub, the witty blind woman is a power 
which must be reckoned with. Her salon is an 
areopagus whose decrees are to be dreaded. To be 



THE FAMOUS SALONS 61 

admitted there is a great distinction, a high favor. 
To cross its threshold one must be a somebody, 
either in the book of heraldry or the golden book of 
literature.^ A procession of influential people, cele- 
brated persons, well-informed newsmongers, defiles 
there at all hours. It is a centre of information 
which has the word of every enigma, the clue to 
every intrigue, the earliest hint of all ideas. It is a 
salon at once diplomatic and literary, political and 
diplomatic; it is the almost official rendezvous of 
foreign diplomatists, who come hither to find the 
daily materials for their correspondence with their 
governments. It is there that all pressing questions 
in France and elsewhere in Europe are treated in a 
remarkable manner by well-bred men who chat, who 
do not argue, and who, seeking above all things to 
be agreeable, know how, according to Boileau's 
precept, — 

" To pass from grave to gay, from lively to severe." 

The sarcastic dowager presides at all their interviews 
with a sort of magistery. The prestige of her repu- 
tation, the verve and eloquence of her speech, the 
superiority of her style and language, her rank, her 
relations, her marvellous wit, so keen, so subtle, 
so piercing, make her a woman whose domination is 
felt by the most recalcitrant. She has the talent of 



1 See the remarkable study by M. Lescure prefaced to the Cor- 
respondance de la Marquise Du Deffand. 2 vol. Plon. 



62 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

making herself feared. Woe to him whose whims 
she takes it into her head to ridicule. She is, as 
she has been called, the female Voltaire, the high- 
priestess of irony. In her slim and nervous little 
hands the sceptre of wit is like a ferule. She is 
often amiable, but a trifle is enough to irritate, to 
embitter her, and then her redoubtable armchair is 
like a tribune whence she launches invectives, 
whence she discharges all the shafts of satire. Hers 
is the chief salon of Paris. Her letters are models 
of style, marvels of precision, lucidity, subtlety. 
No classic writer has a more irreproachable form. 
Madame de Sdvignd has personified the seventeenth 
century. Madame Du Deffand is like the incarna- 
tion of the eighteenth. Voltaire himself, Voltaire, 
who considers her as the arbiter of renown, is so 
afraid of her that, in order to pay court to her, he 
tries to persuade her that he is "blind like herself. 
There is one man, however, who dares to brave the 
vengeful thunderbolts of the Marquise Du Deffand, 
and who must have many reasoiis to fear her, for he 
is a savant, an academician, a man of the world, and 
a philosopher: D'Alembert. But that can be ex- 
plained: D'Alembert is in love with the enemy of 
the Marquise, — Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. 

The two rivals had begun by being friends. They 
lived under the same roof for ten years, from 1754 
to 1764. The illegitimate child of the Countess 
d'Albon, Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, born in 1732, 
had many trials to undergo. Poor, without any 



THE FAMOUS SALONS 63 

support, she had at first been happy to accept 
a shelter with Madame Du Deffand. Pleasing, 
though not pretty, intelligent, instructed, talking 
and writing well, concealing a restless mind and 
an ardent imagination under an apparent calmness 
and reserve, her inferior position, her species of 
social and literary servitude, caused her at last keen 
suffering. The companion made her coup d'Etat. 
She slyly installed in her little room a sort of 
intimate circle reserved to certain initiates coming 
to spend a few moments there in secret before the 
hour when the salon of the Marquise opened. But 
some backbiter betrayed the secret. The blind old 
woman learned of the conspiracy. Exasperated 
by such an act of rebellion, she pitilessly banished 
Mademoiselle de Lespinasse. The quarrel between 
these two women has divided Parisian society into 
two camps, one defending the Marquise, the other 
pitying her companion. Mademoiselle de Lespinasse 
has not remained without resources. Her faithful 
adherents — D'Alembert, Turgot, the Chevalier de 
Chastellux, the Abb^ de Boismont, the Archbishop 
of Aix — have clubbed together to assure her a 
modest but independent position, and have hired 
an apartment for her in the rue de Bellechasse. Her 
salon is not large, but it is animated by a flame 
of intelligence, sympathy, and passion. The re- 
stricted and chosen circle which frequent it find 
more charm there than in the great intellectual 
gatherings of a Marquise Du Deffand or a Madame 
Geoffrin. 



64 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XY. 

These celebrated salons which are the admiration 
of all Europe are very attractive, very agreeable on 
the surface. But what contradictions, what petti- 
nesses, there are in this society of those privileged 
by birth, wit, or fortune ! What hours of discourage- 
ment, ennui, and chagrin are the lot of all these 
people who are amusing themselves, or, better, 
who have the hope, the pretension, of doing so I 
Madame Geoffrin herself, in spite of her good health, 
her good sense, and good humor, contemplates 
at times with inquietude, with alarm, the work 
of these Encyclopedists to whom she renders con- 
tinual services. She receives and protects them, 
she gives large sums to these artisans of disorder, 
these demolishers of the throne and the altar, and 
yet, by one of those inconsistencies so frequent 
in the eighteenth century, she is at bottom a roy- 
alist and a devotee. The friend, confidant, and 
counsellor of the most incredulous philosophers, 
the most dangerous materialists, the woman whose 
largesses contribute greatly to the publication of 
the Encyclopedia, goes to confession to a Capuchin, 
is assiduous at Mass and Vespers, always in her seat 
at the church of Saint Roch, and careful to have 
a priest brought to the death-beds of her friends. 
At times a secret instinct warns this aged woman, 
who likes repose and discriminating conservations, 
that her house, apparently so reserved and tranquil, 
is the accursed laboratory where the poisons which 
will inflict death on individuals and society are 



THE FAMOUS SALONS 65 

being silently prepared under the light of a salon 
lamp, by a restricted and chosen circle. 

Madame Du Deffand herself has at times ephemeral 
inclinations toward religion and piety. It happens to 
her at certain hours to aspire vaguely to the devout 
estate, " the state," she says, " which seems to her 
the happiest in life." She bitterly regrets that peace 
of heart given by the faith, and which is such a force, 
such a consolation, in our valley of tears. In spite of 
all her wit, she succumbs under the burden of an 
incurable ennui, and her letters breathe sometimes 
the accents of despair. In this worldly society, the 
sublimity of frivolity, she expresses here and there, 
with sinister eloquence, thoughts which make one 
shudder. Then her reflections, profound and full of 
anguish, are as striking as the soliloquy of Hamlet. 
Her armchair, which she calls her tub, she might 
also call her tomb. In it she is like a dead woman who 
might have the sentiment of life. To the man who 
said : " Go lightly, mortals, don't bear on too hard," 
to the superficial Voltaire, this poor old woman, blind 
both morally and physically, addresses with doleful 
anxiety questions concerning the terrible problems of 
human destiny. She writes to him, April 1, 1769 : 
" Tell me why, detesting life, I dread death. Noth- 
ing indicates to me that all will not be at an end with 
me ; on the contrary, I perceive the dilapidation of my 
mind as well as that of my body. All that is said for 
or against makes no impression on me. I listen only 
to myself, and I find nothing but doubt and obscurity. 



66 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

Believe ; says one, it is the safest. But how can one 
believe what one does not comprehend? What one 
does not comprehend may doubtless exist ; therefore 
I do not deny it ; I am like one born deaf and blind. 
He admits that there are sounds and colors ; but does 
he know what he is admitting? If it were enough 
not to deny, it would be all very well ; but that is 
not enough. How can one decide between a begin- 
ning and an eternity, between the full and the 
empty ? Not one of my senses can teach me ; what 
can one learn without them? Meanwhile, if I do 
not believe what ought to be believed, I am threat- 
ened with being a thousand times more unhappy 
after my death than I am during my life. On what 
shall one decide, and is it possible to decide ? I ask 
you, who have a character so true, that you ought, 
by sympathy, to discover the truth, if it be discover- 
able. I must have tidings of the other world and 
be told whether we are destined to play a part 
there." 

To crown her misfortunes, Madame Du Deffand is 
at the same time a victim to the tortures of both mind 
and heart. She who had never known real love, falls 
into a sort of ecstatic passion when she is nearly sev- 
enty. She conceives for a man twenty years younger 
than herself, and who fears ridicule above all things, 
the caustic and witty Englishman, Horace Walpole, 
a strange, vague, yet violent and exclusive affection 
which is not friendship, which cannot be love. As 
if by the irony of fate, she loves for the first time at 



THE FAMOUS SALONS 67 

an age wlien it is no longer permissible to love for the 
last one. 

Mademoiselle de Lespinasse is possibly still more 
unhappy than Madame Du Deffand. This demoi- 
selle, apparently frivolous, loves like Sappho, like 
the Portuguese nun, like the new Heloise. She is 
a type of hot-headed, feverish, frenetic love. She 
loves to madness, to frenzy, a brilliant officer who 
cares nothing for her, — M. de Guibert. She lives by 
this love and she dies of it. Her poor body and her 
poor soul are as if enveloped in a shirt of Nessus. 
One might call her a victim of the ancient fatality. 
In her despair, in her agony, she writes to her insen- 
sible lover : " Ah ! how cruel men are ! Tigers are 
kind in comparison to them. I ought naturally to 
have devoted myself to hating; I have fulfilled my 
destiny badly. I have loved much and hated little. 
... I have no longer the strength to love ; my soul 
fatigues, torments me ; I am no longer constant to 
anything. ... I have a fever every day, and my 
doctor, who is not the most skilful of men, tells me 
constantly that I am consumed with chagrin, that my 
pulse and my respiration announce an active suffer- 
ing, and he always goes away saying, ' We have no 
remedy for the soul.' " And you, O philosophers, do 
you think you have any ? Men of the Encyclopedia, 
habitues of the celebrated salons, if you want to 
know what philosophy is, and what religion, com- 
pare the death of one of your adepts with the death 
of a Christian woman ! , 



X 



THE PHILOSOPHERS 



WHERE is the time when La Bruyere wrote; 
" A man born Christian and French finds him- 
self constrained in satire. The great subjects are 
forbidden him." Where is the time when the advo- 
cate Barbier put this sentence in his journal: "I 
think one ought to employ himself honorably, with- 
out meddling in State affairs over which he has 
neither power nor authority." Prudence, reserve, 
respect for authority, fear of weakening the founda- 
tions of the social edifice, — the philosophers have 
changed all that. The salons have become acade- 
mies in which people incessantly talk of religion and 
politics, for the sake of attacking the Church and 
even royalty. In 1762 Bachaumont calls attention 
to a deluge of pamphlets, brochures, and political 
dissertations, " a rage to argue on matters of finance 
and government." Horace Walpole affirms in 1765, 
that " the atheists who engross conversation inveigh 
as loudly against kings as against priests. . . . They 
do nothing but preach, and their avowed doctrine is 
atheism. . . . Even Voltaire does not satisfy them. 

68 



THE PEIL0S0PHEB8 69 

One of their devotees said of him : ' He is bigoted, 
he is a deist.' " 

The philosophers are the heroes of the day. Their 
doctrines have not as yet penetrated the masses of 
the people. But in the aristocracy, the wealthy 
commoners, the world of letters, the superior mag- 
istracy, the world of finance, they take the arrogant 
tone of masters. One meets them in all the academies, 
the houses of all the great nobles, at every fete, 
every elegant supper. Certain prelates of the upper 
clergy even are accused of fraternizing with them. 
Now that the fops are out of fashion, the men in 
vogue are the philosophers. A philosopher with all 
his subversive ideas appears as indispensable to a 
well-kept salon as a chandelier with all its candles. 
Philosophy, before becoming the supreme danger, is 
a pastime, a diversion, an elegancy. The fire which 
is to burn the edifice shows itself at first under the 
aspect of an evening illumination, an amusing Bengal 
light. The great nobles play with loaded guns with- 
out suspecting that they are about to go off. They 
are like workmen who, undertaking works of demoli- 
tion, should delude themselves and naively imagine 
that they are building. Strange types, these revolu- 
tionists in lace jabots, with their fashionable blas- 
phemies, their cups of gold or crystal full of an 
intoxicating but poisonous beverage, these effeminate 
philosophers who, with such a charming smile and eyes 
so soft, utter in refined and pleasing tones the most im- 
pious remarks in the very manner in which one would 



70 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

recite an idyl or a madrigal ! Curious repasts, these 
suppers, where "one is at table amidst a delicate 
luxury, among smiling and well-dressed women, with 
learned and agreeable men, in a society where in- 
telligence is prompt and intercourse safe. After 
the second course there is an explosion of anima- 
tion, sallies flash out, wits flame or sparkle. At 
dessert could one avoid making witticisms on the 
gravest subjects? With coffee arises the question 
of the immortality of the soul and the existence of 
God." ^ Scepticism is regarded as a thing pertain- 
ing to good society. People make a pleasure, a 
glory of it. The old-time aristocratic stiffness 
changes into persiflage or irony concerning sacred 
things. The revolution still wears ruffles. Before 
putting on the carmagnole it drapes itself in silk 
and velvet. It will end with red caps; it begins 
with red-heeled slippers. 

In all this there are many oddities, many incon- 
sistencies. Let Walpole describe it for us. " By 
what I said of their religious or rather irreligious 
opinions, you must not conclude their people of 
quality atheists, — at least, not the men. Happily 
for them, poor souls ! they are not capable of going 
so far into thinking. They assent to a great deal, 
because it is the fashion, and because they don't 
know how to contradict. They are ashamed to 
defend the Roman Catholic religion, because it is 

1 M. Taine, Origines de la France contemporaine. 



THE PHILOSOPHERS 71 

quite exploded; but I am convinced they believe 
it in their hearts." ^ 

The philosophers themselves recoil before the con- 
sequences and the application of their doctrines. 
Diderot, in his Projet cf instruction puhlique pour la 
Russie^ recognizes that " atheism, adapted to a small 
number of thinkers, cannot be suitable for a society." 
He, the pretended destroyer of religions and tyran- 
nies, he who, in an access of savage fury, wrote this 
outrageous distich, — 

" Et ma main ourdirait les entrailles du pretre, 
A defaut de cordon pour etrangler les rois," — ^ 

he professes a naive adoration for the Empress Cath- 
erine II., goes to Russia to pay her homage, and 
receives from her northern majesty a heap of compli- 
ments and presents. Voltaire exclaims in" a candid 
moment: "The wretch," — it is the patriarch of 
Ferney's appellation for the Catholic religion, — " the 
wretch is good for the rabble great and small." 

I read in Bachaumont, under date of April 23, 
1769: "It is known from various letters which 
M. Voltaire has written in this region, that this 
great poet has renewed this year the edifying spec- 
tacle of the last one, and has again received his 
Easter Communion with much devotion, but in a 
less public manner; he has alleged certain incon- 

1 January 25, 1766. 

2 And my hand would twist the entrails of the priest, 
Lacking another cord to strangle kings. 



72 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

veniences which, oblige him to keep his bed, and 
receive Communion in his own house. 

"It is claimed that M. Voltaire, piqued by the 
complaints of the Bishop of Belle j, lamenting over 
his incredulity and his continued obstinacy in 
spreading libels against religion, determined to 
verify this Catholic action, and that he had recourse 
to notaries to receive at this moment his profession 
of faith, which he has sent to Monseigneur. How- 
ever it may be with regard to this circumstance, 
about which people differ, it is evident in several 
letters to his friends how much he is attached to 
religion, what respect he has for it, and with what 
humility he has hastened to satisfy the obligations 
of Catholicity." 

Is Bachaumont altogether serious when he thus 
expresses himself? I could not answer for it. It 
is certain, at all events, that Voltaire built a Catho- 
lic church at his own expense, close beside his 
chateau, and that on the portal of it he had sculpt- 
ured this inscription, more haughty than evangelic: 
Deo erexit Voltaire. 

Such contradictions exasperate Horace Walpole's 
common sense. "Atheism," he writes, "is a piti- 
able mess, although all the cooks of France exert 
themselves to invent new sauces for it. As to the 
soul, perhaps they have none on the continent, but 
I think we have such things in England. I think 
that Shakespeare, for example, had several for his 
part. As to what concerns the Jews, although they 



THE PHILOSOPHEBS 73 

don't eat pork, I like them, because they are better 
Christians than Voltaire. "1 Walpole, the phlegmatic 
Englishman, so moderate, courteous, liberal, so 
accustomed to the civil manners of his country, Wal- 
pole, the friend of the Marquise Du Deffand, the 
wit, the man of fashion, the frequenter of salons, 
could not accustom himself to the philosophers of 
France. He found them ill-bred, pretentious, tire- 
some. He accuses them of "having taken up 
gravity, thinking it was philosophy and English, 
and so have acquired nothing in the room of their 
natural levity and cheerfulness. . . . They are con- 
temptuous and reserved, instead of being ridicu- 
lously, consequently pardonably, impertinent." ^ 
What has become of the old French gaiety? For 
the nation it is no longer anything but a souvenir 
of its youth. "Laughing is as much out of fash- 
ion as pantins or bilboquets. Good folks, they 
have no time to laugh. There is God and the 
King to be pulled down first ; and men and women, 
one and all, are devoutly employed in the demoli- 
tion. They think me profane for having any belief 
left. But this is not my only crime : I have told 
them, and am undone by it, that they have taken 
from us to admire the two dullest things we had. 
Whist and Richardson. ^ . . . There was no soul 
in Paris but philosophers, whom I wished in 



1 Letter of March 17, 1771. 2 Letter of January 25, 1766. 

3 Letter of October 19, 1765. 



74 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

heaven, though they do not wish themselves so. 
They are so overbearing and underbred. ... I 
sometimes go to Baron d'Olbach's; but I have 
left off his dinners, as there was no bearing the 
authors, and philosophers, and savants, of which 
he has a pigeon-house full. They soon turned my 
head with a new system of antediluvian deluges, 
which they have invented to prove the eternity of 
matter." ^ 

All this philosophic and scientific flurry bewil- 
dered and bored the witty Englishman. These end- 
less blasphemies made him love religion. " Don't be 
astonished," he writes, "if I become a thorough 
Jesuit." These gilded salons resplendent with 
lights, these perfumed boudoirs filled with flowers, 
where marchionesses and duchesses, powdered, glit- 
tering, covered with precious stones, and great nobles 
in velvet coats with iridescent reflections, give them- 
selves up to senseless invectives against the Christ, 
make him wish to turn his back upon them all and 
betake himself to tranquil meditation in the depths 
of some cloister, far from the philosophers. "When 
I get too tired of their madness," he says again, 
"I retire to the Chartreuse, ^ where I am tempted to 
prefer Lesueur to all the painters I know." This 
Carthusian convent he always revisited with emotion 
on each of his journeys. In 1739 he had said: "One 

1 Letter of December 5, 1765. 

2 The Carthusian convent at Paris, rue d'Enfer. At that time 
Lesueur' s Saint Bruno, now in the Louvre, might Ibe seen there. 



THE PHILOSOPHERS 75 

finds there every convenience which melancholy, 
meditation, or despair could desire. And yet, one 
is pleased there." But in 1771 the impression is not 
so vivid. He writes, July 9 : " I have not half the 
pleasure in visiting the churches and convents that I 
formerly felt. The consciousness that the vision is 
dispelled, the lack of the fervor so necessary in all 
that is religious, gives these places the aspect of 
theatres doomed to destruction. The monks trot 
from one side to the other as if they had not much 
longer to stay there, and what once appeared to me 
a sacred twilight is now only dirt and shadows." 

Who knows whether impious doctrines have not 
already crossed the thresholds of these pious asylums 
where souls once found emotions so pure and such 
sweet consolations? The stone saints of Gothic 
architecture no longer seem so venerable. The 
changing lights of stained windows have no more 
the same mysterious clearness. The sound of the 
organ is less grandiose, less touching. Walpole is 
afflicted by that spirit of the times, that accursed 
breath which corrupts and withers human souls. 
The same sentiment of vague disquiet, of melan- 
choly discouragement, is found in many minds; 
above all, in many hearts. In the midst of this 
society, ailing in spite of its brilliancy, in spite 
of the paint and patches which cover the cheeks 
of its fashionable beauties, how many strive to 
stupefy themselves, like those timid people who 
sing when they are afraid ! What do these success- 



76 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XY. 

ful personages, men or women, say to themselves 
when, wrested from the worldly tumult, they enter 
into themselves a moment? What do they think 
at the hour when the festal lamps are extinct, the 
flowers faded, and when, after a night noisy with 
impieties and so-called pleasures, the clarity of dawn 
appears ? 



SECOND PART 

THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES AT THE END 
OF THE REIGN OF LOUIS XV. 

[1768-1774] 



LOUIS XV. IN 1768 

MARIE LECZINSKA was just dead, and sad- 
dened Versailles presented a funeral aspect. 
Mademoiselle Genet, the future Madame Campan, 
who had recently become reader to Mesdames de 
France, was profoundly struck by the doleful specta- 
cle offered by the chateau. "Those grand apart- 
ments hung with black," she wrote, "those State 
armchairs raised upon several steps and overhung by 
a canopy adorned with plumes, those caparisoned 
horses, that immense procession in deep mourning, 
those enormous shoulder-knots embroidered with 
gold and silver spangles which decorated the habits 
of the pages and even those of the footmen, all that 
pageantry, in fine, produced such an effect on my 
senses that I could hardly hold myself up straight 
when I was brought into the apartment of the Prin- 
cesses. The first day on which I read in Madame 
Victoire's private room, it was impossible for me 
to pronounce more than two sentences; my heart 
palpitated, my voice trembled, my sight was dim." 
Within two years and a half, Louis XV. had lost 
79 



80 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XY. 

Ms son, his claughter-in-law, and liis wife. These 
three saintly and affecting deaths were for a moment 
to reawaken sentiments of religion and repentance 
in his heart. During the long sufferings of Marie 
Leczinska he had surrounded her with such assidu- 
ous attentions that the poor Queen, little accustomed 
to such solicitude, knew not how to show him her 
gratitude. After she had breathed her last, it was 
with sincere emotion and respectful tenderness that 
her husband imprinted a last kiss on her icy fore- 
head. People fancied that so many warnings could 
not be in vain. Louis XV. was fifty-eight years old. 
His surgeon had recommended virtue to him as being 
good for the body as well as the soul, and advised 
him to not merely rein up his horses, but to take 
them out of the traces. Excusable to a certain degree 
in a young man, vice is ignoble, ridiculous, revolt- 
ing, in an old one. Everything combined to induce 
the King to amend; health, honor, self-interest, 
conscience, the clamor of public opinion, the voice 
of morality and religion, the dignity of his tlu?one, 
and the salvation of his soul. During the last four 
years, since the death of Madame de Pompadour that 
is, he had had no acknowledged mistress. The 
Deer Park was not closed; but the mean debauch- 
eries of that mysterious rendezvous gave less occasion 
for scandal to the court and the people than would a 
reigning favorite in the palace of Versailles. Louis 
XV. showed affection for his four remaining daugh- 
ters, Mesdames Adelaide, Victoire, Sophie, and 



LOUIS XV. IN 1768 81 

Louise, and it was hoped they would bring their 
father back to truly religious ideas. The Most 
Christian King had faith, and it might be believed 
that, age having blunted his passions, he would at 
last repair the evils wrought by his bad example, by 
a pious and respectable life. He may himself have 
desired a reconciliation with God, but the force of 
habit, the interested suggestions of persons speculat- 
ing in vice, a sort of impulse and giddiness, were 
still to prevail over reason and remorse. 

The dominant sentiment in the heart of the aging 
Louis XV. was not the religious one, but a mixtui-e 
of apathy and indifference. Men who have reigned 
for a long time, whether they end their days on the 
throne, abdicate, or die in exile, are nearly always 
attacked, at the close of their career, by a sort of 
lassitude and disgust. They have seen so many 
intrigues, meannesses, and recantations; they have 
been the the object of such stupid adulations and 
loathsome flatteries; they know the ugliness of 
men's souls so thoroughly, that they end by con- 
ceiving an absolute contempt for human nature. 
This contempt does not go so far as wrath and 
indignation; it is tranquil, indolent, disdainful. 
An experienced sovereign retains no illusions con- 
cerning others or himself. Whatever may be pro- 
posed to him, he feels inclined to answer: What 
is the good of it? 

His ministers, his courtiers, his mistresses, his 
people, inspire him with equal mistrust. There are 



82 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XY. 

hours when he would like to abandon the govern- 
mental machine to itself, so much is he afflicted by 
the past and discouraged by the present. Like an 
old pilot contemplating from some rocky height the 
barks threatened by the tempest, which he can no 
longer aid, the monarch, from the interior of his 
palace, sees the ship foundering in the distance, and 
sadly tells himself that he is powerless to save the 
crew. 

Disturbed by gloomy presentiments, Louis XV. 
believed no longer either in the prestige of his throne 
or the future of his family. He had recourse to 
petty means, shabby tricks, conspiracies against him- 
self, in the hope of strengthening his tottering 
power. As Madame Campan has so well remarked, 
"to separate Louis de Bourbon from the King of 
France was what the monarch found the most piquant 
thing in his royal existence." "They wanted it so, 
they thought it would be for the best." That was 
the way he talked when the operations of his minis- 
ters had been unsuccessful. One might say he had 
a dual reign, with two policies and two diploma- 
cies, a private treasury and an occult government in 
opposition to the official one. 

As M. Boutaric says, "the man S23ent a part of his 
life in thwarting and contradicting the king. Curi- 
ous spectacle, that of an absolute monarch reduced to 
the most obscure intrigues in order to obtain his 
will, which he is afraid to declare, engaging in an 
underhand and secret struggle with his ministers, 



LOUIS XV. IN 1768 83 

and at last deceived in his expectations, wounded in 
his self-love, a retired conspirator, persisting to his 
last breath in intrigues transparent on every side, 
and owing it solely to his supreme rank that he does 
not share the captivity or exile of his agents, I was 
about to say his accomplices." It was in this way 
that he admitted to his secret diplomacy such per- 
sons as the Chevalier d'Eon, by turns man and 
woman, and the famous Count de Saint-Germain, 
who, claiming to be several centuries old, was sup- 
posed to possess a prodigious elixir of long life. 
Baron de Gleichen relates in his Souvenirs that 
this "led to the composition of the laughable story 
of the old chambermaid of a lady who had hidden 
away a phial of this divine liquor; the ancient 
soubrette discovered it and drank so much of it 
that by dint of drinking and rejuvenating, she 
became a little baby." 

There were adventurers in the personnel of the 
secret diplomacy, but there were remarkable men 
likewise. Count de Broglie was the chief of these. 
The mysterious Minister of Foreign Affairs acted 
simultaneously with the official one. "He pres- 
ently had trusty agents at every court ; sometimes it 
was the resident minister himself, unknown to the 
titular Minister of Foreign Affairs ; more frequently 
it was some inferior employee of legation, who thus 
became a spy on his immediate chief. M. d'Ogny, 
director of the secret postal service, recognized the 
despatches of the initiated diplomatists by an exte- 



84 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

rior sign ; they were sent to Count de Broglie through 
Guinard, a servant of the chateau, deciphered in the 
cabinet of the Count, and then sent back to Louis 
XV. with draughts of replies, to which the King each 
time affixed his visa after making corrections. Baron 
de Breteuil, ambassador to Sweden in 1766, who had 
been recommended by the King to pay particular 
attention to the affairs of that country. Count Desal- 
leurs, ambassador to Constantinople, M. de Saint- 
Priest, and lastly, M. de Vergennes, took part in 
this secret diplomacy.^ "Count de Broglie retained 
the direction of it even after he had been exiled in 
consequence of an official disgrace which was only 
apparently such. " As M. Geffroy remarks : "Louis 
XV., aided by this unknown personnel, liked to 
direct the principal affairs himself with a certain 
attention. Perhaps, jealous of all who surrounded 
him, — ministers, favorites, and mistresses, — he took 
pleasure in being able to thwart and oppose them 
secretly, in conspiring against them without taking 
the trouble to make an open resistance. His hidden 
policy was frequently more honorable than the 
avowed policy of the cabinet of Versailles." M. 
Theodore Lavall^e has made the same reflection. 
He says : " The secret correspondence of Louis XV. 
shows that this prince had the sentiment of national 
grandeur as if by royal instinct and family tradition ; 
it is full of good sense, dignity, and loyalty. No 

1 Gustave IIL et la Cotir de France, par M. A. Geffroy. 



LOUIS XV. IN 1768 86 

one can read it without regretting that this noble 
policy should have been rendered sterile by lack of 
will, that these profound views concerning the inter- 
ests of France's future should have been lost sight of 
in the debaucheries of the Deer Park." 

What was lacking to Louis XV. was not intelli- 
gence — he had a great deal of it; nor was it the 
moral sense, for even while doing evil he had a clear 
idea of what was right ; it was will. From his youth 
he had had upright and pure intentions, and from 
time to time he had them still, but he did not feel in 
himself the needful energy to withstand the torrent 
of his time. As was said by his huntsman, Le Roy, 
that master of the hounds whom Sainte-Beuve styles 
a La Bruyere on horseback, "he despaired of ever 
being able to do what is right, because one is always 
more disposed to regard as impossible in itself what 
one has not the courage to do. To this point had a 
man arrived by degrees whose intelligence and char- 
acter, if he had been born a private person, would 
have made him considered above the common and 
what is properly called a gallant man." In growing 
old he had preserved a noble and elegant figure, reg- 
ular features, a reserved but subtle and witty style 
of conversation, an exquisite politeness, and a very 
great care of his person. " This prince was still be- 
loved ; one would have desired that a manner of life 
suitable to his age and dignity should at last throw a 
veil over the aberrations of the past and justify the 
love which the French people had had for his youth. 



86 LA8T YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

It pained them to condemn him severely. If he had 
established recognized mistresses at court, the exces- 
sive devotion of the Queen was blamed for it. Mes- 
dames were reproached for not trying to avert the 
danger of seeing the King arrange another intimacy 
for himself with some new favorite. People regretted 
Madame Henriette, twin-sister of the Duchess of 
Parma; this princess had had some influence over 
the King's mind; they wrote that if she had lived 
she would have exerted herself to provide amuse- 
ments for him in the bosom of his own family ; that 
she would have accompanied the King on his jour- 
neys, and would have done the honors of those little 
suppers which he was fond of giving in his private 
apartments." ^ 

Count de S^gur, a wit and boon companion par 
excellence, who saw the last years of Louis XV., like- 
wise speaks of them with a certain sympathy. " This 
good, feeble monarch," he says in his charming 
Memoirs, " was in his youth the object of a too little 
deserved enthusiasm ; the rigorous reproaches cast 
upon his old age are not less exaggerated. Suc- 
cessor to the absolute power of Louis XIV., he 
reigned sixty years without its being possible to 
accuse him of an act of cruelty. . . . No prince can 
be found who has not more or less participated in the 
errors, weaknesses, and follies of his' time. More- 
over, the French have always shown themselves too 

1 Memoirs of Madame Campan. 



L0UI8 XV. IN 1768 87 

lenient to this sort of wrong-doings ; but they desire 
at least that these stains should disappear under the 
rays of some halo of glory. Hence they become only 
too indulgent and almost panegyrize the same faults 
when committed by the chivalrous Francis I., the 
brave Henry, the majestic Louis XIV., while they 
bitterly reproach the weak Louis XV. on account of 
them." 

Sovereigns are nearly always the personification of 
their epoch. They seem to give the law, but gener- 
ally they merely submit to it. The contrasts in the 
character of Louis XV. reappear in the society of 
which he was the head. He belongs to that period 
of dissolution and decay when, according to Chateau- 
briand's expression, " statesmen became men of letters, 
and men of letters statesmen ; great nobles bankers, 
farmers-general great nobles. The fashions were as 
ridiculous as the arts were in bad taste ; they painted 
shepherdesses in paniers in salons where colonels 
were embroidering. Everything was out of order in 
both minds and morals, sure sign of a revolution. . . . 
To see the monarch benumbed in voluptuousness, the 
courtiers corrupted, the ministers malicious or imbe- 
cile, some of the philosophers undermining religion, 
and others the State; the nobles either ignorant or 
attacked by the vices of the day; the ecclesiastics, 
at Paris, the disgrace of their order; the provinces 
full of prejudices, — one would have thought of a 
crowd of workmen hastening to tear down a great 
edifice." 



88 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

And yet, in appearance, there was very little 
alteration. As Count de Sdgur remarks, "the old 
social edifice was completely ruined in its lowest 
foundations, without any sign at the surface which 
announced its approaching fall. The change in 
manners was unperceived because it had been grad- 
ual; the etiquette at court was the same, — the same 
throne, the same names, distinctions of rank and 
formalities were still held there. The parliaments, 
opposing the government, but in a respectful manner, 
had become almost republican without suspecting it, 
and were themselves striking the hour of revolutions 
while supposing they were merely following the 
examples of their predecessors when they resisted 
the concordat of Francis I. and the fiscal despotism 
of Mazarin." Louis XV., who was a shrewd observer, 
in spite of his defects, appreciated the whole gravity 
of the situation. But to remedy it would have 
demanded genius, — not merely cleverness, talent, or 
wisdom. To conciliate, at the close of the eighteenth 
century, necessary liberties with indispensable author- 
ity, was a problem which the greatest of men might 
have found no means of solving. Louis XY. con- 
tented himself with saying : " Things will last as 
they are as long as I do." 

At his side a minister was governing whose char- 
acter was in singular contrast with that of his master. 
The Duke de Choiseul was as enthusiastic, loqua- 
cious, good-humored, as Louis XV. was reserved, 
taciturn, and bored. The monarch, although he 



LOUIS XV. IN 1768 89 

understood his religion badly, had a deep and lively 
faith, while the minister was Voltairean. Liked by 
the parliaments, the aristocracy, and the men of let- 
ters, Choiseul, with his audacious petulance, his 
brilliant and easy way of transacting business, his 
seductive and resourceful talent, his witty even elo- 
quent conversation, his faith in his star, his habit of 
believing all successes possible, his philosophy which 
stopped at Voltaire and disdained Rousseau, his un- 
conscious prodigality, which, counting on the future 
suppression of monasteries and the taxation of eccle- 
siastical property to supply the deficit, was untroubled 
by the pit dug beneath the throne, Choiseul was the 
type of that brave and charming, frivolous and ad- 
venturous nobility which marches smilingly toward 
an abyss covered with flowers. "Never," says Baron 
de Gleichen in his Souvenirs^ " have I known a man so 
capable as he of spreading joy and contentment all 
around his person. When he entered a room, he 
rummaged his pockets and seemed to draw from 
them an inexhaustible abundance of pleasantries and 
gaiety." 

In spite of his charm and kindliness, the minister, 
whom Pope Benedict XIV. described as "a fool 
who had a good deal of genius," had drawn upon 
himself irreconcilable enmities. His rivals and those 
who were jealous of him could not forgive him for 
his lofty fortune, and anxiously sought means of 
overthrowing this colossus who dominated every- 
thing. In what salon, by what means, could they 



90 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

hope to prepare and bring about the fall of the man 
who hampered them, — such was the question they 
incessantly asked themselves. As has been remarked 
by Madame Campan, Louis XV. had at this time 
no relations with women except those of a class 
that could be of no use in a prolonged intrigue ; the 
Deer Park, moreover, was a seraglio in which the 
beauties were constantly renewed. They would have 
liked to give the monarch a mistress who, by means 
of daily insinuations, might have force enough to 
overthrow the powerful minister. To fight a grand 
vizier, a sultana was essential. This was why the 
enemies of the Duke de Choiseul cast their eyes upon 
the woman whose beginnings we are about to recall, 
— the Countess Du Barry. 



II 

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE COUNTESS DXT BARKY 

ON the 9tli of January, 1829, a curious suit was 
tried before the civil tribunal of first instance. 
It was a contest between two families, each of which 
claimed to be the sole heir of the Countess Du Barry, 
and demanded the carrying into execution of a legacy 
bequeathed to the Countess by the Duke de Coss^- 
Brissac, massacred by the revolutionists in 1792. 
The Duke, while naming his daughter, Madame de 
Mortemart, as universal legatee, had burdened her 
succession by a legacy which, at first, could not be 
paid. But under the Restoration the Mortemart 
family, having received a considerable portion of the 
indemnity of a milliard, granted to the Emigres^ 
found itself in a position to accomplish the last 
wishes of the Duke de Brissac. The Gomard heirs 
presented themselves, appealing, as the certificate of 
Madame Du Barry's birth to the following extract, 
drawn, they said, from the baptismal registers of the 
parish of Vaucouleurs, diocese of Toul : " Jeanne, 
daughter of Jean-Jacquard Gomard de Vaubernier 
and Anne Becu, called Quantigny, was born August 
^ 01. 



92 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

19, 1746, and was baptized the same day, had Joseph 
de Mange for godfather and Jeanne de Birabin for 
godmother, who have signed with me : L. Galon, 
vicar of Vaucouleurs, Joseph de Mange and Jeanne 
de Birabin." 

The heirs on the maternal side, the Becus, also pre- 
sented themselves. They came not merely to share, 
but to contest with the Gomards all rights of suc- 
cession to Madame Du Barry. They maintained that 
the certificate of birth furnished by the latter was 
false, having been fabricated in 1768 to flatter the 
Countess, and they opposed to it another act, taken 
from the civil registers of the town of Vaucouleurs, 
September 25, 1827, and which was expressed in these 
terms : " Jeanne, natural daughter of Anne B^cu, 
called Quantigny, was born August 19, 1743, and 
baptized the same day. For godfather she had 
Joseph Demange, and for godmother Jeanne Bira- 
bin." 

By judgment of January 9, 1829, — a judgment 
confirmed by a decree of the royal court of Paris, 
Eebruary 22, 1830, — the Seine tribunal of first in- 
stance decided in favor of the B^cu heirs. The 
certificate of birth produced by the Gomards was 
declared apocryphal. The tribunals thus established 
that in 1768 a genealogy of complaisance had been 
invented in favor of the mistress of Louis XV. Of 
a natural daughter they had made a legitimate 
daughter. The Bdcu girl had been transformed into 
a Demoiselle Gomard de Vaubernier. The "par- 



BEGINNINGS OF THE COUNTESS DU BABRY 93 

tide " was attributed to the godfather, M. Demange, 
and to the godmother, Jeanne Birabin, " la Birabine," 
as they said in the country, who became Madame de 
Birabin. The fawning spirit went to even further 
lengths. The favorite was made younger and made 
to come into the world, not on August 19, 1743, the 
real day of her birth, but three years later, August 
19, 1746. In his interesting work, Les Curiosites 
historiques, M. Le Roi, the learned curator of the 
Versailles library, has told the truth about the origin 
of the Countess Du Barry. He has given her back 
her true name : Jeanne Becu. He has refuted the 
numberless falsehoods which tended to create an 
absolutely false legend on the subject of the royal 
mistress. 

The child who was one day to call herself the Coun- 
tess Du Barry had for mother a simple peasant. She 
had to struggle against poverty from her cradle. A 
commissary of provisions, M. Dumonceau, gave her 
the first elements of instruction through charity. He 
placed her in the convent of Saint Anne, with two 
pairs of sheets and six napkins by way of trousseau. 
It is said that she afterwards peddled haberdashery 
through the streets, and later on, under the name of 
Mademoiselle Ran^on, the name of the husband re- 
cently taken by her mother, entered the millinery 
shop of one M. Mabille, rue Saint Honord. It seems 
the little shop girl was not a model of virtue. Alas ! 
the snares of every kind with which pretty girls are 
surrounded make goodness and beauty what may 



94 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

almost be called incompatible things in the poorer 
classes. The milliner encountered one of those men 
who are met in every capital, — ^ Count Jean Du Barry. 
He said to himself that so charming a person ought 
to make her way, and in his enthusiasm he gave her 
a seraphic title : he called her Mademoiselle I'Ange. 
This angel, of an inferior order, presided at the 
gambling-parties given by the Count. It was there 
Dumouriez saw her in 1764. In 1764 the Duke de 
Lauzun followed her from the opera ball, and found 
her truly ravishing. Lebel, valet-de-chambre to Louis 
XV., who, in consequence of his special functions 
was on the track of all dainties for the King, thought 
he would do well to place Mademoiselle I'Ange on the 
list of his clients. He fancied she would be only the 
favorite of a day and night and would then dis- 
appear, after having had her place in the Deer Park 
but an instant. He was mistaken. The former milli- 
ner was destined to a succession that had been vacant 
four years, — that of the Marquise de Pompadour. 

Instead of imitating the great ladies who fatigued 
the King, she showed herself just as she was, under 
the aspect of a veritable courtesan, with all the 
cynicism, animation, and refinements of her trade. 
Louis XV. found his jaded senses revive as if by 
miracle. He was delighted by it. The new favorite 
seemed to him an exceptional being. He determined 
to cover her with a rain of gold and jewels, and 
make her the first femme entretenue in France, in 
all Europe. 



BEGINNINGS OF THE COUNTESS DU BABRY 95 

Thinking that a demoiselle could not decently 
fulfil the functions of royal mistress, he decided that 
he would at once make the new favorite a married 
woman and a woman of title. Nothing easier than 
to find her a nominal husband who, having received 
a goodly sum, would quietly retire behind the scenes 
and not appear again on the stage. Count Jean Du 
Barry could not play this lucrative part himself, 
seeing that he was already married. But he had a 
bachelor brother who seemed made expressly for the 
circumstance. This complaisant brother was called 
Count William Du Barry. He was a poor officer of 
marines, who lived at Toulouse, with his mother. 
To summon him to Paris, to marry him to the 
mistress of Louis XV., to give him a large sum and 
send him back at once to Toulouse, was but the 
affair of a few days. Queen Marie Leczinska had 
died June 24, 1768. Her husband did not lament 
her long, for he was smitten the next month with 
this so-called Jeanne Gomard de Yaubernier, this 
Jeanne B^cu, called I'Ange, who was about to become 
Madame the Countess Du Barry. The contract was 
signed, July 23, in presence of the notaries Du 
Ch^telet of Paris, and this comedy marriage was 
celebrated, September 1, at the church of Saint 
Laurent, Auteuil. The nuptial benediction once given, 
the husband departed for Toulouse, and the wife went 
to take up her quarters at Versailles. 

Louis XV. congratulated himself on his choice. 
Madame Du Barry was neither learned nor witty; 



LAST TEAB8 OF LOUIS XV. 



she had no relatives well placed at court, and to the 
monarch these seemed very great advantages. He 
did not want either a great lady, like the Duchess 
de ChS/teauroux, who would have arrived with a 
cortege of relations and favorites, nor a female 
politician, like Madame de Pompadour, who would 
constantly busy herself with parliaments and the 
clergy. What he desired was not a female adviser, 
but an amusement. 



Ill 

THE TEIUMPHS OP THE COUNTESS DU BAERY 

WHAT would the Countess Du Barry "become ? 
Would she be an ephemeral mistress, like 
the women of the Deer Park, or would she have the 
official position of favorite? This was what every- 
body was asking. The important thing to know was 
whether or not she would be presented. Bets were 
openly made on this question at Versailles. The 
Duke de Choiseul, hostile to the new countess, was 
against the presentation. But the King desired it. 
His will finally prevailed. He had known Madame 
Du Barry since July, 1768, but she was not presented 
until April 22, 1769. The ceremony took place with 
the ordinary formalities. After having received the 
command of the King, who had already been told the 
names of the sponsor, a lady making the presenta- 
tion, and of her two assistants, who must always be 
women of the court, they arrived at the door of the 
grand cabinet in full toilette ; that is, in robes 
stretched over hoops measuring three and a half ells 
in circumference, a long mantle clasped at the waist, 
a suitable bodice, flowing lappets, and as many dia- 

97 



98 LAST TEAHS OF LOUIS XV. 

monds as they had been able to procure. Madame 
Du Barry's sponsor was the Countess de Bdarn. 
Louis XV. looked radiant. He enjoyed the triumph 
of the woman he had chosen. 

Thenceforward he was settled. Madame Du Barry 
was sufficient for her royal lover, who was tired 
of going clandestinely to the Deer Park, where 
he was obliged to hide himself, and was conse- 
quently not at ease. He closed that mysterious 
establishment and lodged his new mistress in the 
chateau of Versailles, in an apartment on the second 
story, just over that which he occupied himself. 
He could go to her at any hour, and unobserved, 
by a staircase leading to the Deer Court. A door 
opening on a small landing gave admission to one 
of the two cabinets situated near the alcove of the 
favorite's chamber. Her apartment formed a suite 
of boudoirs each more elegant than another. It 
was the last word of luxury. The bedroom clock 
represented the three Graces supporting a vase 
in which was a revolving dial, while above it Love 
indicated the hours with his arrow. The most 
exquisite objects of art, marvels of upholstery, 
bronzes, marble, lacquer work, china, statuettes, 
abounded in this asylum of voluptuous pleasure. 

" It is the senseless dream of a gay woman," say 
Messrs. de Goncourt; "a folly of expenditure, an 
extravagance of luxury. Millions are flung away 
for the caprices of fashion, for rarities in jewelry, 
point lace, silk and velvet, a flood of money; the 




MADAME DU BARRY. 



TBIUMPHS OF THE COUNTESS BU BABBY 99 

royal treasure flowing through the hands of a pretty 
woman upon the world of tailors, milliners, dress- 
makers." 

All this life spent in furnishing, in giving orders 
and commissions, in toilettes and purchases of every 
sort, is wholly fantastic and capricious. Her apart- 
ment in the chateau of Versailles no longer suf&ces 
the Countess. Louis XV. gives her a house in the 
city, rue de I'Orangerie,^ where she installs herself 
with her attendants and her equipages. At the 
beginning of the year 1769, she receives one hundred 
thousand livres as a life annuity on the city of Paris, 
and a pension of ten thousand livres on the States 
of Burgundy. July 24 of the same year, her 
generous lover, who is more and more contented 
with her, compliments her by presenting the beau- 
tiful chateau of Luciennes, bought from the Duke 
de Penthievre. The favorite triumphs; she has 
the same retinue, riches, and position as the Mar- 
quise de Pompadour. Young, pretty, seductive, 
with her blue eyes and brown eyebrows, her fair 
hair, her little Grecian nose, her rosy lips and satin 
skin, her mild yet roguish expression, she shines 
with all the splendor of her twenty-five years. 
Hers is not a majestic beauty, but a sprightly and 
frolicsome one which retains a certain carelessness 
and negligence even when arrayed in the most 
magnificent toilettes. It cannot be denied that 

1 The house is No. 2 at present. 



100 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

she possesses charm. Louis XV. seems bewitched 
by her. Marshal de Richelieu, who was so severe 
on the Marquise de Pompadour, gives the Countess 
Du Barry his entire approbation. The Marquise Du 
Deffand writes to Horace Walpole, June 25, 1769 : — 
"Out in the country, the other day, while the 
master of the house (the King) was playing whist, 
the head of the conspiracy (Marshal de Richelieu) 
set up a little game of lansquenet to teach it to the 
lady (Madame Du Barry). He lost two hundred and 
fifty louis. The master of the house jeered at him, 
asking him how he could have lost at such a small 
game ; he answered by a quotation from the opera : — 

" ' Le plus sage 
S'enflamme et s'engage 
Sans savoir comment.' ^ 

The master laughed and all the troup6." 

There were people, however, who did not go into 
ecstasies over the beauty of the new favorite. In 
September, 1769, Horace Walpole saw her in the 
chapel of the chateau of Versailles. He did not 
admire her much, and thus describes the impression 
she made on him in a letter to George Montagu : "A 
first row in the balconies was kept for us. Madame 
Du Barry arrived over against us below, without 
rouge, without powder, and indeed sans avoir fait 
sa toilette ; an odd appearance, as she was so con- 
spicuous, close to the altar, and amidst both court 

1 The wisest takes fire and pledges himself without knowing how. 



TRIUMPHS OF THE COUNTESS DU BABEY 101 

and people. She is pretty, when you consider her; 
yet so little striking, that I never should have asked 
who she was. There is nothing bold, assuming, or 
affected in her manner. Her husband's sister was 
along with her. In the Tribune above, surrounded 
by prelates, was the amorous and still handsome 
King. One could not help smiling at the mixture 
of piety, pomp, and carnality." 

Madame Du Barry was the first to be astonished by 
her lot. Her transformation into a great lady seemed 
to her a disguise. She was still more surprised when 
they tried to make a political woman of her. Devoid 
of hatred, ambition, or calculation, she asked for 
nothing but to occupy herself with her toilettes and 
her furniture. Politics seemed to her a tedious 
thing. What were parliaments, the clergy, and di- 
plomacy to her ? She had a good many other things 
to think about. From the time when she had made 
her entry at court she had asked for nothing but to 
live at peace with all the ministers. She sent word 
to the Duke de Choiseul that if he wanted to be 
friends with her, she would go half way to meet him. 
The person who carried this message recalled the fact 
that mistresses drive out ministers, and ministers do 
not drive out mistresses. The Duke contented him- 
self with replying coldly by a vague promise to grant 
such of Madame Du Barry's demands as he considered 
just.^ The enemies of the minister had the greatest 



^ S6nac de Meilhan, Portraits et Caracteres des personnes dis- 
tinguees de la Jin du XVIIP. siecle. 



102 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

difficulty, notwitlistanding their incessant efforts, in 
persuading the inoffensive Countess to oppose him. 
At first her attacks on him were only skirmishes, or 
better, mere roguish tricks. The Marquise Du Deffand 
wrote to Horace Walpole, November 2, 1769 : " The 
grandpapa " (the nickname given to Choiseul) " daily 
receives little affronts, such as not being named or 
invited for the little cabinet suppers, and, when visit- 
ing Madame Du Barry, grimaces when he is her 
partner at whist, — mockeries, shruggings of the 
shoulders; in fine, the petty revenges of a school- 
girl." 

Meanwhile the friends of the Duke de Choiseul 
did not as yet disquiet themselves, and Madame 
Du Deffand wrote, to Walpole, January 15, 1770 : 
" Dame Du Barry has no influence, and there seems 
no likelihood that she ever will have any ; she has 
neither affection nor hatred for anybody ; she can 
say what they make her say, like a parrot, but without 
design, interest, or passion ; no one contrives to gov- 
ern with a character like that." However, the security 
of the Marquise as to the fate of the Duke de Choiseul 
did not last long : " The controller-general is at the 
feet of Madame Du Barry, and does not blush at it," 
she wrote, March 3, 1770 ; " he says he is following 
the example of all ministers who want to be listened 
to by kings, and even to be useful to them. Just at 
present our friend seems well disposed ; but I doubt 
whether the year will end without a great revolution." 
In the same letter she adds : " The King continues 



TRIUMPHS OF THE COUNTESS DU BABBY 103 

much smitten with his dame, but without showing 
her much consideration; he treats her sufficiently- 
like a wench ; in fine, she will be good or bad ac- 
cording to him who rules her; her own character 
will influence nothing. She may serve the passions 
of others, but never with the warmth and success one 
has when one shares them; she will repeat her les- 
son ; but in circumstances where she has not been 
inspired, her own genius will not make up for it." 

At this epoch a malicious stanza got into circula- 
tion which is quoted in one of the letters of the 
Marquise (November 2, 1769). It was considered 
to sum up the complaints of the Duke de Choiseul, 
the friend of Madame de Pompadour, the enemy of 
Madame Du Barry. It was sung to the air of Vive 
le Vin, Vive V Amour. 

" Vive le roi ! Foin de 1' Amour ! 
Le drole m'a joue d'un tour, 
Qui peut confondre mon audace. 
La Du Barry, pour moi de glace, 
Va, dit-on, changer mes destins. 
Jadis, je dus ma fortune aux catins ; 
Je leur devrai done ma disgrace." ^ 

Madame Du Barry let herself be dragged into 

1 Long live the King 1 The deuce take Love ! 
The rogue has played me a trick 
Which may take down my presumption. 
The Du Barry, cold as ice to me, 
Is about, they say, to change my destiny. 
Of old I owed my fortune to wantons ; 
I am going then to owe them my disgrace. 



104 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

the struggle almost against her will. Three men 
urged her on: the Duke d'Aiguillon, the Abb^ 
Terray, the Chancellor Maupeou. Surrounded by 
this triumvirate, the Countess smilingly entered the 
political lists. One can understand what indigna- 
tion such an enemy must have caused a man so bold 
and haughty as the Duke de Choiseul. He chafed 
at his bit. His power was only to last some months 
longer. But before his downfall he was to see the 
arrival in France of the princess whose marriage with 
the Dauphin he had negotiated, that charming and 
poetic young girl who appeared in an aged court like 
a beam of pure light, that touching victim of fatality 
whose suave and august countenance make a striking 
contrast with that of the Du Barry, and whose name 
cannot be pronounced without an unspeakable 
blending of sympathy and compassion, tenderness, 
and respect, — Marie Antoinette. 

At the moment when all minds were occupied with 
the coming marriage of the Archduchess with the 
Prince who was one day to be called Louis XVI., a 
novice was praying in the convent of Carmelites at 
Saint Denis for the safety of France, menaced by so 
many catastrophes. This novice was one of the 
daughters of Louis XV. While egotism and 
voluptuousness dominated in the palace of Ver- 
sailles, the spirit of immolation and self-sacrifice 
took refuge in a convent, near the last dwelling- 
place of kings. Madame Du Barry was scandal; 
Madame Louise of France, edification. 



IV 

MADAME LOUISE OP FRANCE, CAEMELITE NOVICE 

WE are in 1770. Madame Louise of France, 
the youngest of the daughters of Louis XV., 
is thirty-two years old. "For some years," says 
Madame Campan, " Madame Louise had led a very 
retired life; I used to read to her five hours a day; 
my voice often betrayed the fatigue of my chest ; the 
Princess would then prepare sugared water and place 
it beside me, excusing herself for making me read 
so long by saying it was necessary for her to finish a 
course of reading she had undertaken." Why is the 
King's daughter bent on finishing this course so 
quickly ? That is her secret. In appearance, she is 
leading a luxurious life. In reality, she is silently 
making her mysterious apprenticeship of renuncia- 
tion and immolation, accustoming herself to endure 
excessive cold or heat, and wearing beneath her 
linen the serge of the Carmelites. In the evenings, 
when she is alone in her room, she extinguishes her 
wax tapers and lights candles, so as to habituate her- 
self to the odor of tallow, which at first had caused 
her unendurable repugnance. "She had a lofty 

105 



106 LAST TEAB8 OF LOUIS XV. 

soul," says Madame Campan; "she loved great 
things; she used often to interrupt my reading to 
exclaim : ' How fine that is ! How noble ! ' There 
was but one brilliant action which she could per- 
form : to quit a palace for a cell, rich garments for 
a robe of frieze; she performed it." 

Certain writers who, being devoid of the religious 
sentiment, persist in seeing the earth everywhere, 
and never look at heaven, have insisted on attrib- 
uting the holy resolutions of Madame Louise to 
human motives, and barely refrained from describ- 
ing a Carmelite as an ambitious intriguant. M. 
Honor^ Bonhomme, the author of Louis XV. et sa 
famille, was better inspired when he wrote : " When 
the Queen died, Louis XV. had had a glimmering 
of repentance. People might have fancied that his 
morals were to be more regular; but no! Very 
speedily a new favorite, the Du Barry, was pre- 
sented, and we know the rest. Now, it was after 
this signal relapse on her father's part, when she 
saw him fall back soul and body, and deeper than 
ever, into shameful disorders, that, heartbroken with 
sorrow, and deprived of all hope, Madame Louise 
hastened to demand of God, in the austerity of the 
cloister, not pardon for herself, — she did not need 
it, — not the calm and repose which were lacking to 
her, — she had sacrificed them, — but to ask of God, 
with tears and fervor, the conversion of her father, 
the salvation of the King." 

The Countess Du Barry's formal presentation at 



MADAME LOUISE OF FRANCE 107 

court took place April 22, 1769. January 30, 1770, 
Madame Louise cliarged Monseigneur de Beaumont, 
Archbishop of Paris, to ask the King to allow her to 
enter the religious state. Profoundly surprised by 
so unexpected a communication, Louis XV. remained 
silent for awhile. Then he exclaimed several times: 
"This is cruel! this is cruel!" and deferred his re- 
ply for a fortnight. The desired consent was at 
last obtained. The Abbe du Terney, the Princess's 
confessor, brought her the following letter from the 
King, dated February 20, 1770; — 

" Monseigneur the Archbishop, my dear daughter, 
having given me an account of all that you have 
said and written to him, will surely have acquainted 
you exactly with all I said to him in reply. If it 
is for God alone, I cannot oppose myself to His will 
nor to His determination. You must have made 
your reflections ; hence, I have nothing more to ask 
concerning them ; it seems even that your arrange- 
ments are made; you can speak of them to your 
sisters when you think proper. Compiegne is not 
possible; you may choose any other place, and I 
would be very sorry to prescribe anything on the 
subject. I have made some involuntary sacrifices; 
this one will be voluntary on your part. God will 
give you strength to support your new state, for, the 
step once taken, there can be no return. I embrace 
you with all my heart, my dear daughter, and give 
you my blessing." 

There was, at Saint Denis, a Carmelite convent, 



108 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

SO poor that the nuns had been obliged to make 
retrenchments in their food, already so frugal, and 
the baker was beginning to refuse them bread. It 
was this house, reduced to profound distress and 
threatened with dissolution for lack of pecuniary- 
resources, that Madame Louise selected for her final 
refuge. At the very time when the nuns were 
making a novena to entreat God to provide for the 
existence of their community, Louis XV. gave his 
daughter the permission she had so ardently desired. 
Madame Louise still maintained absolute secrecy, 
especially with her sisters, whose remarks she may 
have dreaded. April 5, 1770, she received the fol- 
lowing note from Louis XV., dated at Choisy: — 

" I embrace you with all my heart, my dear daugh- 
ter, and send you the order you spoke to me about 
for your departure, and I will execute what you de- 
sire for your domestics, and all your other arrange- 
ments. You will have only a word from me this 
evening, my little heart, for it is late." In the 
morning of April 11, the Princess entered a car- 
riage, at Versailles, with a maid of honor and an 
equerry, and drove to Saint Denis. She wore a 
plain silk dress under a large black mantle, and a 
high bonnet adorned with a bunch of red ribbons. 
On reaching Saint Denis, she said: "To the Car- 
melites." The door of the cloister opened, and 
Madame Louise disappeared behind it. Her maid of 
honor, the Princess de Ghistelles, and her equerry, 
M. d'Haranguier de Quincerot, thought she would 



MADAME LOUISE OF FRANCE 109 

return after having heard Mass. Their surprise can 
be imagined when, summoned within the convent 
by the Princess, they read the King's order. 

During the day, the sisters of the novice learned 
what had occurred. At first they were in despair; 
but after the first involuntary anger had passed away, 
they felt nothing but respect for so pious a resolu- 
tion. In his book on the daughters of Louis XV., 
which is so full of facts and documents, M. Edouard 
de Barthelemy has given the letters written her by 
Mesdames Adelaide and Sophie. This is Madame 
Adelaide's: — 

" Thou canst fancy better than I can express what 
has passed and is still passing in my heart. My 
grief equals my astonishment ; but thou art happy, 
and that is all I want. Pray God for me, dear heart, 
thou knowest my needs; they are more than ever 
pressing just now. I will certainly go to see thee 
as soon as I have strength enough, and thou canst 
receive me without feeling disturbed. Adieu, dear 
heart. I am going to Tenehrce, where I fear I shall 
be a little distracted. Love me always, and believe 
I shall return it well." 

Here is the letter of Madame Sophie : — 

"If I never spoke to thee again, dear heart, of 
the desire I suspected in thee to become a nun, it 
is because I thought thou wouldst never carry it into 
effect. I pardon thee with all my heart for telling 
me nothing about it. Thy sacrifice is beautiful, 
because it is voluntary. But dost think that the one 



110 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

thou hast imposed on me, in leaving us, and which 
is not voluntary, is not as hard to bear? Be very 
sure, dear heart, that I love thee, that I will love 
thee all my life, and that when thou permittest, I 
will go to see thee with much eagerness. I embrace 
thee with all my heart." 

A diplomatic circular addressed to the King's 
ambassadors at foreign courts notified them of the 
"exemplary and affecting event" which had just 
occurred, and Pope Clement XIV. addressed to the 
Most Christian King a brief which resembled a can- 
ticle of thanksgiving. 

Madame Campan relates that when she went to 
see the Princess at the convent for the first time, 
she found her coming out of the laundry, where her 
king's daughter's hands had just been doing the 
washing. The novice said to her former reader at 
this time : " I greatly abused your young lungs for 
two years before executing my purpose. I knew I 
could read nothing here but books tending to our 
salvation, and I wanted to review all the historians 
who had interested me." Speaking afterwards of 
her religious vocation, she said: "Believe me, 
the moralists are right when they say that happiness 
does not dwell in palaces; I have acquired a cer- 
tainty of that. If you wish to be happy, I advise 
you to come and enjoy a retreat where the most 
active mind might find full exercise in the contem- 
plation of a better world." 

The grating is closed at last upon the daughter of 



MADAME LOUISE OF FRANCE 111 

Louis XV. Between her and the world the gulf has 
become impassable. What a contrast between the 
palace and the cloister! Yesterday, all splendor 
and magnificence, radiant galleries, marble stair- 
cases, majestic apartments; to-day, humility, pov- 
erty, a monotonous existence, the rigors of enclosure. 
Yesterday, robes of gold brocade, laces, precious 
stones, diadems; to-day, the frieze habit, the bitter 
chalice. Yesterday, noise, worldly animation; to- 
day, the silence and obscurity of the tomb. 

They say that certain courtiers who did not com- 
prehend Madame Louise, criticised or pitied her; 
that the Mar^chale de Mirepoix called her "a mad 
woman, entering the cloister to annoy the court in 
the name of Heaven"; that the Duke d'Agen thought 
he proved his wit by saying : " If Madame Louise is 
in such a hurry to go to Paradise, it is because she 
wants to be certain of not spending eternity with 
her family." 

The Marquise Du Deffand, who plays the philoso- 
pher, writes in one of her letters : " This adventure 
has not made a great sensation. People shrug their 
shoulders, pity her weakness of mind, and talk of 
something else." 

The sarcastic Marquise compassionates a princess 
who, says she, "makes herself miserable for chime- 
ras." Madame Du Deffand is mistaken; with all 
her intelligence, she is much more to be pitied than 
Madame Louise. There are a good many more 
chimeras in her salon than in the Carmelite convent. 



112 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

As to Louis XV., lie was profoundly convinced that 
his daughter was happy. "But, Sire," Madame Du 
Barry said to him one day, "Madame Louise will 
have a wretched fate at the convent!" — "Not at 
all," he replied, "she will be the most tranquil one 
of the family. The devotees did not invent quiet- 
ism for nothing." Perhaps the voluptuous monarch 
himself felt, at times, a disgust for his palaces, and 
what one might call a homesickness for the cloister. 
Charles V. is not the only one who has dreamed of 
the monastic life. The greatest debauchees some- 
times have their moments of mysticism. 

The daughter of an earthly king now confides her- 
self to the King of Heaven. As she is no longer 
attached to a perishable throne, but to the cross, 
which is immortal, she finds herself more at liberty 
in her voluntary captivity than she once was in the 
whirlpool of the world. She does not regret the 
crowd of courtiers who hasten to the (Eil-de-Boeuf. 
She does not regret that palace inhabited by cares 
and troubles, wherein, as La Bruy^re puts it, peo- 
ple rise from and lie down on self-interest. She 
does not regret those base flatteries, a deafening 
murmur which fatigues ear and heart alike; those 
protestations of zeal which are merely the calcula- 
tions of egotism, ambition, and cupidity, that pom- 
pous and vain magnificence which gives not one 
moment of true happiness. The rules of the clois- 
ter, though hard and austere, seem to her less pain- 
ful than the restrictions of etiquette. She prefers 



MADAME LOUISE OF FRANCE 113 

one ardent aspiration toward the Christ, one tear of 
religious ecstasy, to all earthly treasures. Here 
there are no more scandals, no more falsities, no 
more infamies; here is repose, here the veritable 
love! 

It is curious to observe that the angel of Madame 
Louise at the convent of Saint Denis, that is to say, 
the nun whose duty it was to initiate her into the 
practices and duties of a Carmelite's life, was Sis- 
ter Julie, in the world Julienne de MacMahon, a 
daughter of that illustrious family to which belonged 
the Marshal who was at the head of the French gov- 
ernment. 

Several contemporary publicists have spoken with 
levity of certain writings connected with the relig- 
ious vocation of the royal Carmelite, such as the 
Abb^ Proyart's work, that of the Countess Droho- 
jowska, and the Count de Chambord's letter to the 
Holy Father. For my part, I own that such writ- 
ings seem to me profoundly affecting. Is it not 
good to think that not far from the boudoir where a 
Du Barry was degrading the royal authority, there 
was a little cell wherein a descendant of Saint Louis 
sought to avert the scourges of God by prayer? If 
debauchery has its priestesses of vice and scandal, 
chastity must have its virgins and heroines. At 
the side of blasphemies, abject even to indecency, 
there must needs be prayers ardent to exaltation. 
To compensate for so many outrages against the 
divine majesty, there must be virtues whose sublime 



114 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

and enthusiastic character seems to profane eyes a 
sort of exaggeration, a delirium. To make folly and 
voluptuousness forgotten for a moment, there must 
be just persons who display what Saint Paul has 
called the folly of the cross. It is because, in spite 
of so many debauchees, there were still elect souls 
who preserved treasures of purity in the sanctuary of 
their consciences, that the eighteenth century was 
not altogether ruined, and that, when the revolution 
came, the women of this society, which was thought 
so corrupt and frivolous, recalled the force of the 
primitive Christians and the sacred energy of the 
martyrs by their greatness of soul and their firmness 
on the scaffold. Who knows ? Perhaps if Madame 
Louise of France had not become a Carmelite, the 
august woman whom we are about to behold for the 
first time in the palace of Versailles would have 
had less dignity when confronted with her persecu- 
tors, less courage in presence of her executioners. 



V 

THE CHILDHOOD OF MAEIE ANTOINETTE 

ON All Souls Day, November 2, 1755, a formi- 
dable earthquake covered Lisbon with ruins. 
At Vienna there was born, on the same day, a child 
destined to the most tragic fate, a princess who, 
having like the Christ her palms and her Golgotha, 
was to sum up in her own person all the joys and all 
the anguish, all the triumphs and all the sorrows, of 
woman. 

This existence, doomed to catastrophes which 
surpass the most memorable examples of ancient 
fatality, began in that calm which heralds the storm. 
The Empress Maria Theresa, a woman of both heart 
and genius, was equally admirable as a sovereign, 
wife, and mother. As simple as majestic, she 
needed not the prestige of etiquette to inspire ven- 
eration. A few days before Marie Antoinette was 
born, the Duke de Tarouka had laid a wager with 
the Empress that she would give birth to a son. 
When he lost his bet, he caused a kneeling figure 
to be modelled in porcelain, which was presenting to 
the Sovereign some tablets on which were engraven 

116 



116 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

four verses in Italian from the poet Metastasio, 
which may be thus translated : " I have lost. The 
august daughter has condemned me to pay. But it 
is true that if she resembles you, all the world will 
be the gainer." 

Maria Theresa began betimes to give Marie An- 
toinette the most serious instructions. She showed 
her the shroud she had woven for herself with her 
own imperial hands, and taking her down into the 
vaults where their ancestors were sleeping: "It is 
to me," she said, "that people now address the hom- 
age of which they were once the object ; I shall be 
forgotten like them." When they were out driv- 
ing, the Empress and her husband gave the right of 
way to the most humble vehicles, and quietly took 
their places in the line. According to an expres- 
sion of Goethe, the imperial household was only a 
great German citizen's family. Maria Theresa 
walked out with her daughters like a private person ; 
she visited familiarly at the castles of the Counts 
Palfy, and those of the Esterhazy and de Kinsky 
princes. She gave an equally benevolent reception 
to a noble or a commoner, a diplomat or an artist; 
she made little Marie Antoinette play with little 
Mozart. 

The young Archduchess grew up beneath this 
mild and salutary influence. Her father, the Em- 
peror Francis, may have felt for her an even greater 
tenderness than for his other children. In 1765 he 
went to Innspriick, where he was to be present at the^ 



CHILDHOOD OF MABIE ANTOINETTE 117 

marriage of the Archduke Leopold with a Spanish 
Infanta. After his journey had begun, he stopped 
his carriage at a short distance from Schonbrun : " Go 
back, and find the Archduchess Marie Antoinette," 
said he to a member of his suite; "I must see her 
again." The little Princess arrived. Her father 
wept as he embraced her. He invoked God's bless- 
ing on her, and even then had to make a violent 
effort before he could leave her. He was never to 
see her again. A few days later he died at Inns- 
priick, from a sudden attack of apoplexy. Marie 
Antoinette remembered all her life the last look her 
father had bent upon her. Was not this gaze, so 
full of tenderness and anxiety, a presentiment? 
One day, Maria Theresa questioned the thaumatur- 
gist Gassner concerning the fate of the young Prin- 
cess. " Will my Antoinette be happy?" she asked 
him. Gassner turned pale and was silent. Urged 
by the Empress to reply, "Madame," said he sadly, 
"there are crosses for all shoulders." 

But let us dispel gloomy images of the future. 
The most brilliant destiny is in preparation for the 
little Archduchess. It is she who is to unite the 
Hapsburghs to the Bourbons; she who is to be Queen 
of France. Maria Theresa likes to cherish this beau- 
tiful dream. In 1766 an influential Parisian woman, 
whose salon had become celebrated throughout 
Europe, Madame Geoffrin, goes to Poland to visit 
Stanislas Poniatowski. She stops in Vienna, where 
she meets a reception of which she is very proud. 



118 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

"I think I must be dreaming," she writes to M. 
Bautin, Receiver-General of Finances, June 12, 1766 ; 
"I am as well known here as in the rue Saint 
Honor^, and for the last fortnight my journey has 
caused an incredible commotion." Speaking of 
Marie Antoinette in the same letter, Madame Geof- 
frin adds: "The Empress has recommended me to 
write to France that I have seen this little one, 
and that I find her beautiful." 

Madame Geoffrin took the Princess on her lap. 
"Here," said she, "is a little girl that I would very 
much like to take with me." — " Take her, take her ! " 
gaily replied the Empress, who was thinking of 
Versailles and the Dauphin. From that time Maria 
Theresa sought to form the future Dauphiness to the 
likeness of the court of France. Language, litera- 
ture, novels, history, fashions, theatrical pieces, 
books, almanacs, engravings, everything that sur- 
rounded the young Archduchess, was French. 

As M. Feuillet de Conches has said in the elo- 
quent preface to his collection, " the wind of France 
breathed through the beautiful fair tresses of Marie 
Antoinette." She danced with Noverre, declaimed 
with Sainville, recited Racine's tragedies and La Fon- 
taine's fables with Dufresne. A famous hairdresser, 
Larsonneur, was brought from Paris, and with him 
milliners and dressmakers for the service of the 
young Princess. Her true adornment was her natu- 
ral grace. As has been said by Madame the Countess 
Armaill^, in a charming study which she calls La 



CHILDHOOD OF MABIE ANTOINETTE 119 

Mere et la Fille^ " certain female faces seem to have 
no brilliancy except when surrounded by the anima- 
tion of festivities ; others harmonize with the fresh- 
ness of nature, the gentle poesy of solitary country 
places. It was this kind of beauty that Marie An- 
toinette possessed. Her supple and slender figure, 
the grace and lightness of her bearing, recalled the 
heroines of German legends. Undine was not more 
charming when, rising from the bosom of the waves, 
she wandered for a time among mortal beings. Her 
blue eyes, whose limpid tint was compared to that of 
the waters of the Danube, were both soft and spar- 
kling. Her mouth, rosy and smiling, seemed to re- 
ceive an added grace from a little dimple in her chin. 
Her hair, of an ashy blond, drawn back in accord- 
ance with the fashion of the day, left visible her 
pure, haughty forehead and her well-defined and 
graceful neck. Ever5rthing in her breathed distinc- 
tion, kindness, candor." Though no longer a child, 
she was not yet a woman. She had that blending 
of intelligence and ignorance, wit and simplicity, 
which has such grace and charm. Already a shade 
of melancholy sometimes overspread that pure and 
radiant visage, which was lighted up by so sweet a 
smile. "Poor women! " has said a young girl, Mad- 
emoiselle Rosa Ferrucci, whose touching story has 
been related by the Abbd Perreyve, "poor women! 
we are weaker than the leaves that the first breeze 
tears off and scatters, and childhood is scarcely over 
when our heart, which knows only how to love and 



120 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

suffer, is rent by a thousand contrary thoughts, joy- 
ful and sorrowful." 

Versailles appeared to Marie Antoinette in a brill- 
iant background. The Abb^ de Vermond, a French 
ecclesiastic who had been her preceptor since 1768, 
told her wonderful things about this dazzling abode 
where she was to shine with so great a splendor. 
But the affectionate soul of the Princess was afflicted 
by the thought that she must leave her cherished 
mother, her beloved family, the honest Viennese, 
who were so devoted to their sovereigns. Nowadays, 
when sovereigns give their daughters in marriage, 
they have almost the certainty of seeing them again. 
But it was not so then. Separations were eternal. 
One can understand what Maria Theresa suffered 
when she reflected: Soon this beloved daughter of 
whom I am so proud will depart forever. Soon I 
must give her a last blessing, a last embrace. Like 
many mothers, the Empress was afflicted by an event 
she had most ardently desired. The union, so 
favorable to the Austrian policy, was decided on. 
Marie Antoinette was to become the Dauphiness of 
France. The nearer the moment of departure came, 
the more the Empress was affected. She took her 
daughter on her lap, embraced her, made her sleep 
in her own room. Clinging to the treasure she was 
about to lose, she would have liked to arrest the 
march of time. Marie Antoinette was not less sad 
and anxious. January 21, 1770, she received the 
nuptial ring sent her by the Dauphin, and just 



CHILDHOOD OF MAEIE ANTOINETTE 121 

twenty-three years later to a day. . . . But no, we 
will not think yet of the final catastrophes. 

The Marquis de Durfort repaired to the palace on 
April 16, and in the name of the Most Christian 
King officially demanded the Archduchess for the 
Dauphin. On the ITth, the Princess renounced her 
rights to the Austrian succession. On the 18th, the 
fetes began at Vienna and were prolonged until the 
21st, the day set for the departure of the Arch- 
duchess. The 19th, she was married by proxy. The 
Dauphin was represented by the Archduke Max- 
imilian. The signing of the imperial register took 
place at the palace of the Burg. It is said that 
Marie Antoinette's hand trembled when she took 
the pen. The Dauphin having expressed a wish that 
the Archduchess herself should signify her consent 
to the marriage, Marie Antoinette had written to 
him: "I thank you for the expressions so full of 
benevolence which you employ towards me ; I am 
profoundly touched and honored by them, and I feel 
that such goodness on your part imposes obligations 
on me. The examples and lessons of my glorious and 
tender mother have taught me to accomplish all my 
duties, and, with the help of God, I hope by every 
effort to render myself worthy of the new destiny 
created for me. You have kindly asked that my 
consent to your choice should accompany that of the 
Empress-queen; you say you need to receive me 
from myself also. I may answer, since she author- 
izes me to do so, that I have received my mother's 



122 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

orders with as mucli pleasure as respect. You will 
find in me a faithful and devoted wifcj having no other 
thought than that of putting into practice the means 
of pleasing you and meriting your attachment." 

The city of Vienna is gay and sorrowful at once. 
Shouts of joy mingle with tears. A three-days re- 
treat, ended by the reception of communion, is 
followed by a visit to the tombs of the emperors. 
The Archduchess kneels down and invokes the 
souls of her ancestors. At last it is time to depart. 
The 21st of April is here. Adieu patriarchal resi- 
dence of the Burg! Farewell ye shades of Schon- 
brun. Adieu blue, limpid lakes of Laxenbourg! 
Adieu good Viennese who weep for the young exile ! 
Ah! whether she be a peasant or an empress, the 
mother who for the last time beholds her daughter's 
face and hears her voice, follows her with her eyes 
and confides her to Providence ; then, seeking her, 
but finding her no more, she returns alone to her 
chamber, closes the door and falls upon her knees ; 
the mother who has felt the anguish of that heart- 
rending torture, separation, will comprehend what 
passed in the heart of Maria Theresa. This depart- 
ure of Marie Antoinette reminds me of a once popu- 
lar but now forgotten chanson, the distant echo of 
which affects me at this moment, doubtless because 
my mother sang it to me when I was a child : — 

" Ici commence ton voyage. 
Si tu n'allais pas revenir 1 . . . 
Ta pauvre mfere est sans courage 
Pour te quitter, pour te benir. 



CHILDHOOD OF MAEIE ANTOINETTE 123 



Travaille bien, fais ta prifere. 
La priere donne du coeur, 
Et qiielquefois pense a ta mere, 
Cela te portera bonheur. 

Adieu, ma fille, adieu 1 

A la grace de Dieu 1 . . . 

" EUe s'en va, douce exilee, 

Gagner son pain sous d'autres cieux ; 
Longtemps encor, dans la vallee, 
Sa mere la suivit des yeux, 
Puis, lorsque sa douleur amere 
N'eut plus sa fille pour temoin, 
Elle pleura, la pauvre mere, 
L'enf ant qui lui disait de loin : 

Adieu, ma mere, adieu ! 

A la grace de Dieu." i 

1 Here thy ]*ourney begins. 
If thou wert never to return ! . . , 
Thy poor mother has no courage 
To leave thee, to bless thee. 
Labor well, say thy prayer ; 
Prayer gives courage ; 
And think sometimes of thy mother, 
That will bring thee happiness. 

Adieu, my child, adieu 1 

To God's grace I commend thee 1 . . . 

She goes, the gentle exile, 

To earn her bread 'neath other skies ; 

A long time yet, in the valley, 

The poor mother follows her with her eyesj 

Then, when her bitter sorrow 

Is no longer witnessed by her child, 

She weeps, poor mother, 

For the child who says from afar : 

Adieu, mother, adieu ! 

To God's grace I commend thee I . . « 



124 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

Weber says in his Memoirs : " One cannot easily 
shake off the superstition of presentiments, when one 
has seen the farewells of Marie Antoinette to her 
family, her servants, and her country. Men and 
women yielded to the same expressions of grief. No 
one returned home until after losing sight of the last 
courier who followed her, and then only to lament in 
the privacy of the family a common loss." The die 
was cast! Departing never to return, the young 
girl of fourteen was urged by fatality toward the 
abyss. 



VI 

MAEiE Antoinette's aeeival in fkance 

AT the moment when Maria Theresa pressed 
Marie Antoinette to her heart for the last 
time, she gave her a precious paper containing the 
wisest counsels. This masterpiece of maternal solici- 
tude, written by the Empress's own hand, was en- 
titled: A Bute to he read Every Month. It began 
thus : " This 21st of April, the day of departure. — 
On awaking, you will kneel down and say your 
morning prayers as soon as you arise, and also a 
short spiritual reading, even if it were only for half 
a quarter of an hour, before occupying yourself with 
anything else and without having spoken to any per- 
son. All depends on the good beginning of the day 
and the intention with which one commences it, 
which can render even indifferent actions good and 
meritorious." Maria Theresa then went on into all 
the details of a pious life. " I do not know," she 
said, " whether it is the custom in France to ring the 
AngSlus ; but collect your thoughts at that hour, if 
not in public, at least inwardly. ... If your con- 
fessor approves, you will approach the Sacraments 

125 



126 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

every six weeks, also on the great feasts, and espe- 
cially those of the Blessed Virgin ; on those days, or 
the vigil of them, do not forget the special devotion 
of your family toward the Blessed Virgin, whose par- 
ticular protection it has experienced on all occasions. 
Read no book, however unimportant, without having 
first asked the approval of your confessor. This is a 
point especially necessary in France, where books full 
of entertainment and erudition are constantly appear- 
ing, but among them are some which, under this veil 
of respectability, are pernicious to religion and moral- 
ity. I conjure you then, my daughter, not to read 
any book, not even a brochure, without the advice of 
your confessor ; I require of you, my dear daughter, 
this most real mark of your affection and obedience 
to the counsels of a good mother who has no end in 
view but your salvation and your happiness." 

The monthly regulation terminated with these sim- 
ple and affecting words : " Never forget the anniver- 
sary of your late father's death, nor mine at the same 
time ; meanwhile, you can take that of my birthday 
to pray for me." 

The young betrothed was on her way to France. 
The heavens were illuminated by the joyous sunshine 
of spring. "All nature was smiling at this new 
Iphigenia who was advancing with the same confi- 
dence to marriage and the sword. God of mercy! 
Why didst Thou not arrest that royal progress, those 
triumphs of grandeur, youth, and beauty ! Why 
didst Thou not withdraw this august child from the 



MABIE ANTOINETTE'S ABBIVAL IN FRANCE 127 

fatal destiny that awaited her ! Ah ! how sweet her 
death would have been in comparison to that re- 
served for her at the hands of execrable tormentors ! 
Austria would have received the mortal remains of 
the daughter of the Hapsburghs with pious emotion. 
The prayers of a Christian mother would have borne 
her virginal soul to the eternal dwellings, and France, 
cast down by a blow so unexpected, would also have 
lamented this young Princess, too quickly ravished 
from its hopes." ^ 

Marie Antoinette reached Schutteren, the last Ger- 
man town before Kehl and the Rhine bridge. May 6, 
1770. She saw France for the first time. She heard 
the sound of the Rhine waters, those poetic, majestic 
waters, so often, alas, troubled and tinged with blood, 
those waters which now wash two German shores, 
but which then flowed beside a French one. On the 
large island of the Rhine a pavilion had been erected, 
which was called the pavilion of the Exchange. It 
comprised a large hall with a room on either side ; 
one of these was intended for the lords and ladies 
of the court of Vienna who had been charged to 
accompany the Princess to the threshold of her new 
country; the other for her French suite, her lady of 
honor, the Countess de Noailles, her lady of the bed- 
chamber, the Duchess de Coss^, her four ladies of the 
palace, the Count de Saulx-Tavannes, her chevalier 



1 Madame tlie Countess d'Armaill6, La Mere et la Fille, (Maria 
Theresa and Marie Antoinette) . 



128 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XY. 

of honor, the Count de Tess^, her first equerry, the 
Bishop of Chartres, her first chaplain, her officers, 
equerries, and body-guards. Here took place the 
symbolical ceremony of the delivery. The pavilion 
was hung with tapestries. The choice of these was 
unfortunate. "It was nothing less," said Goethe, 
who was then a student of the University of Stras- 
burg, "than the history of Jason, Medea, and Creusa. 
On the left side of the throne one saw the unfortu- 
nate affianced a prey to the torments of the most cruel 
death. On the right, the furious Jason was deplor- 
ing the loss of his children, lying dead at his feet, 
while the Fury who had slain them was taking her 
flight through the air on her chariot drawn by drag- 
ons." On beholding these preparations, the future 
author of Faust exclaimed: "What I Is it possible 
that at the first step a young princess takes in her 
new kingdom, such an example of the most horrible 
marriage possible could be placed so inconsiderately 
before her eyes ? Was there no one among the archi- 
tects and decorators of France able to comprehend 
that a picture is a representation, that it moves the 
senses and the soul, that it excites presentiments ? " 
The weather was stormy and dark as Marie Antoi- 
nette entered the pavilion of the Exchange. A 
heavy cloud which veiled the horizon on the Stras- 
burg side was slowly moving toward the great island 
of the Rhine. The three commissioners appointed 
by the King were waiting in the central hall. 
Toward noon the door of the Austrian salon was 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S ABBIVAL IN FRANCE 129 

opened, and the Dauphiness appeared. She walked 
to the platform in the middle of the room, and 
there listened to the reading of the full powers 
and the acts of delivery. When this formality was 
ended, the members of the Austrian suite passed 
for the last time in front of the former Arch- 
duchess, kissed her hand, and then returned to the 
Austrian salon, the door of which was closed again. 
The Dauphiness changed her entire apparel. " When 
her dress had been completely renewed, even to her 
chemise and stockings, so that she should retain 
nothing from a foreign court (an etiquette always 
observed in this circumstance), the doors were re- 
opened, the young Princess came forward, looking 
about for the Countess de Noailles, and then threw 
herself into her arms, asking her, with tears in her 
eyes and a candor that came from her heart, to direct 
and counsel her, and to be in all things her guide 
and support. It was impossible to refrain from ad- 
miring her aerial deportment; a single smile was 
enough to attract one, and in this enchanting being 
in whom the splendor of French gaiety shone forth, an 
indescribable but august serenity, perhaps, also, the 
somewhat proud attitude of her head and shoulders, 
betrayed the daughter of the Caesars."^ The cere- 
mony of the exchange was terminated. On reaching 
the French side of the Rhine, the Dauphiness got 
into the King's carriage, and started for Strasburg. 

1 Memoirs of Madame Campan. 



130 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

Then the storm broke which had been threatening 
for some hours. The pavilion of the Exchange was 
submerged under a driving rain. The shouting of 
the crowd mingled with the claps of thunder. 

The next day, May 8, Marie Antoinette repaired 
to the Strasburg cathedral. A young prelate, 
Prince Louis de Rohan, stood in front of the door, 
in a chasuble of cloth of gold, the cross in his hand, 
the mitre on his head. "Madame," said he, "the 
two nations reunited in this temple are eager to 
render eternal thanksgivings to the God of empires, 
who, by august and longed-for ties, is about to set 
the seal to their common felicity, and to cement an 
alliance the aim of which has been to protect religion 
and bring about the reign of peace. You see the joy 
of Alsace breaking forth ; France awaits you to crown 
its wishes. In the movements of joy about to mani- 
fest themselves, recognize, Madame, the same senti- 
ment which caused tears to flow in Vienna, and 
which leaves the keenest and most profound regrets 
in the hearts of those from whom you are separated. 
Thus it is that the Archduchess Antoinette is already 
known even where she has not yet been seen; often 
this is merely the advantage of birth; for you, 
Madame, it is the right of your virtues and your 
graces; it is, above all, the reputation of those nat- 
ural and beneficent qualities which the cares of 
an ever-memorable mother have perfected in you. 
Among us you will be the living image of this cher- 
ished Empress, who has long been the admiration of 



MAEIE ANTOINETTE'S AEBIVAL IN FRANCE 131 

Europe, as she will be that of posterity. It is the 
soul of Maria Theresa which is about to unite itself 
to the soul of the Bourbons. A new age of gold 
should spring from so beautiful a union, and our 
nephews, under the happy empire of Antoinette and 
Louis Augustus, will see that welfare perpetuated 
which we are enjoying under the reign of Louis the 
Well-Beloved." The man who employed this lan- 
guage was the future Cardinal de Rohan, the sorry 
hero of the affair of the necklace. 

Paris, Versailles, all France, was in commotion. 
Nothing was talked of but the arrival of the Dau- 
phiness. Upholsterers, sent from city to city, pre- 
pared apartments for her. Sixty perfectly new trav- 
elling-carriages awaited her at Strasburg. At Paris, 
people were going to the court dressmakers to admire 
the robes intended for the forthcoming festivities. 
A piece of fireworks was talked of, the bouquet of 
which, composed of thirty thousand rockets, was said 
to have cost four thousand louis (nearly fifty thousand 
francs of the present money). 

The Dauphiness continued her route. Along her 
way the towns were joyful and the country places 
in festal array. The ground was covered with flow- 
ers. Young girls, gowned in white, offered bou- 
quets to Marie Antoinette. The bells were ringing 
merrily. From every side resounded cries of "Long 
live the Dauphiness ! Long live the Dauphin ! " 
The road was obstructed by the crowd of spectators ; 
the curtains of the Princess's carriage were drawn 



132 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

up, and everybody could contemplate at leisure her 
beauty, her enchanting smile, her sweet expression. 
Some young peasants said to each other " How pretty 
our Dauphiness is!" A lady who was in the car- 
riage called her attention to this flattering speech. 
"Madame," replied the Dauphiness, "the French 
look at me with indulgent eyes." 

To all this succeeded the official harangues, a 
series of dithyrambs in honor of the young Princess. 
One orator wished to speak to her in German. 
"Monsieur," said she, "after to-day I understand no 
language but French. " At Nancy she piously visited 
the tombs of her ancestors, the Princes of Lorraine. 
At Rheims, thinking of the future ceremony of the 
coronation, she said : " This is a city which I hope 
not to see again for a long time." Some leagues 
from Compiegne she met the Duke de Choiseul, 
whom she received as a friend of her family. This 
was the 14th of May, 1770. Several minutes later, 
the King and the Dauphin, followed by a numerous 
escort, made their appearance at the cross-roads of the 
Pont-du-Berne, in the forest of Compiegne. Marie 
Antoinette at once alighted, and threw herself on 
the grass, at the feet of Louis XV., who hastened to 
raise and embrace her. 

The Dauphin, more abashed than she was, scarcely 
dared to look at her, and, according to the official 
expression, "saluted her on the cheek." 

The next day they left Compiegne for Versailles. 
When passing through Saint Denis, Marie Antoi- 



MARIE ANTOINETTE'S ABBIVAL IN FBANCE 133 

nette expressed a wish to see her aunt, Madame 
Louise, the Carmelite novice. She entered the 
convent, with the King, at six o'clock in the even- 
ing, May 15th. A letter of the Carmelite, which is 
among the manuscripts of the National Library, 
says, concerning this visit: "The King asked to 
have the nuns brought in that I might show them 
Madame the Dauphiness. She is, my reverend 
mother, a perfect princess as far as her face, her 
figure, and her manners are concerned, and, which 
is infinitely more precious, they say she is eminently 
pious. Her physiognomy has an air of blended 
grandeur, modesty, and sweetness. The King, 
Mesdames, and above all Monseigneur the Dauphin, 
appear enchanted with her. They vie with each 
other in saying: 'She is incomparable.' " 

There were immense crowds all along their route. 
The air resounded with enthusiastic acclamations. 
Marie Antoinette had the tact to attribute the honor 
of this to Louis XV. "The French," said she, 
"never see enough of their King; they could not 
treat me more kindly than by proving that they know 
how to love him whom I am already accustomed to 
regard as a second father." Marie Antoinette slept 
at the chateau of La Muette the night of May 15th, 
and it was there that the King presented her, among 
other jewels, with the famous pearl necklace, 
threaded on a single string, which was brought to 
France by Anne of Austria, and destined by her for 
the queens and dauphinesses. The next day, Marie 



134 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

Antoinette arrived at Versailles ; she did not behold 
unmoved that celebrated palace which then played 
so great a part in France and Europe, and of which 
she had heard so much. She passed through the 
castle gate at ten in the morning, and entered the 
marble court, where she was received by the Kipg 
and the Dauphin. 



VII 

THE MAKEIAGE FESTIVITIES OF MAEIE ANTOINETTE 

WE have just seen the Dauphiness arriving at 
the chateau of Versailles. It is ten o'clock 
on the morning of the 16th of May, 1770. In a 
little while the nuptial benediction will be given to 
the spouses. Every glance is fixed on the young 
Princess with respectful curiosity. She is in morn- 
ing dress, and her hair is carelessly arranged. Pres- 
ently she will reappear in the dazzling wedding 
toilette. This is her portrait as drawn by Bachau- 
mont: "She is very well made, symmetrical in all 
her members. Her hair is a beautiful blonde ; one 
fancies it will some day be a pale chestnut. Her 
forehead is fine; her face, a somewhat long, but a 
graceful, oval; her eyebrows as well marked as a 
blonde's can be. Her eyes are blue without being 
dull, and sparkle with a vivacity full of intelligence. 
Her nose is aquiline, rather thin at the tip. Her 
mouth is small; her lips are thick, especially the 
under one, which one knows to be the Austrian lip. 
Her skin is of dazzling whiteness, and she has a 
natural color which needs no rouge. Her bearing 

135 



136 LAST YEAES OF LOUIS XV. 

is that of an arcliduchess, but her dignity is tempered 
by sweetness. It is difficult to see this Princess 
without feeling a mingled respect and tenderness." 

At one o'clock the Dauphiness, in full dress, and 
followed by a numerous cortege, goes to the chapel 
with the Dauphin. The officiating priest is the 
Archbishop of Rheims, Monseigneur de La Roche- 
Aymon, Grand Almoner of France. The pair ad- 
vance to the altar and kneel down. The chapel is 
decked with flowers and garlands, and glitters with 
a thousand lights. The Archbishop blesses thirteen 
pieces of gold and a gold ring. These he presents to 
the Dauphin, who puts the ring on the fourth finger 
of the left hand of the Dauphiness, and afterwards 
gives her the thirteen gold pieces. After the " Our 
Father " has been said, the canopy of silver brocade 
is held over them by the Bishop of Senlis on the 
side of the Prince, and the Bishop of Chartres on 
that of the Princess. The spouses, profoundly moved, 
plight each other an affection which death itself will 
not have the power to interrupt. 

At this moment all Paris is at Versailles. The 
people have been coming on foot since daybreak. 
The citizens have been arriving, some on hired 
horses, some in cabs, some in carriages from livery 
stables. The park is thronged by an immense 
crowd. Alas ! The sad omens are about to be re- 
newed. At three in the afternoon the sky is over- 
cast by clouds. Rain pours down in torrents. The 
thunder rumbles. Every one seeks shelter. There 



MABBIAGE FESTIVITIES 137 

is a general panic. In the evening the weather is so 
bad that the fireworks cannot be set off. The illumi- 
nations are drowned in rain ; the streets and squares 
of Versailles are like a desert. 

But if the approaches to the chateau are dismal 
in the evening, it is dazzling within. All the splen- 
dors of aristocracy, riches, luxury, and the fine arts 
are accumulated there. There is a game of lans- 
quenet in the Gallery of Mirrors, and a supper is 
served au grand convert in the hall known as the 
Queen's Antechamber (No. 117 of M. Soulid's 
Notice du Muses'). The next day, May 17, the new 
theatre, begun in 1753, and designed by the archi- 
tect Gabriel, is opened for the first time. (This is 
now the Senate Chamber at Versailles.) The piece 
presented is the opera of Persee, words by Quinault, 
music by Lulli. May 19, a grand dress ball, opened 
by the Dauphin and the Dauphiness, is given in this 
new play-house. 

That morning, Madame Du Deffand had written 
to Horace Walpole : " There have been bickerings 
without number; the minuet which is to be given 
this evening by Mademoiselle de Lorraine, has vexed 
a great many people." The minuet, in fact, is a 
great affair, and the whole court is in commotion 
over it. What is it all about ? Louis XV., in order 
to be agreeable to the Empress Maria Theresa, has 
decided that Mademoiselle de Lorraine, on account 
of her relationship to the Dauphiness, shall dance a 
minuet immediately after the princes and princesses 
of the royal family. People have taken the notion 



138 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

this displays a tendency to establish for the house of 
Lorraine an intermediate rank between the princes 
of the blood and the great nobles. Thereupon en- 
sues a flood of jealousy and anger. The dukes unite 
to convoke an assembly of the principal members 
of the nobility at the house of the Bishop of Noyon, 
a brother of Marshal de Broglie. There they draw 
up a grand memorial to the King, in which they 
say : " Sire, the great lords and nobles of the realm lay 
with confidence at the foot of the throne the just 
alarms awakened in them by the widespread rumors 
that Your Majesty has been solicited to grant the 
house of Lorraine a rank immediately after the 
princes of the blood, and that you have ordered that 
at the dress ball of Monsieur the Dauphin's marriage, 
Mademoiselle de Lorraine shall dance before all the 
ladies of the court. . . . They believe. Sire, that 
they would be lacking in what is due to their birth 
if they did not manifest to you how greatly a dis- 
tinction as humiliating to them as it is novel, would 
add to the grief of losing the advantage they have 
always had of not being separated from Your Maj- 
esty and the royal family by any intermediate rank. 
In all states, the grandeur of the highest ranks de- 
notes that of the nations, and the grandeur of the 
nations makes that of the kings. It would be to 
doubt the pre-eminence of France in Europe, to 
doubt the pre-eminence of those who, in the words of 
one of your ancestors, make a part of its honor and 
the essential honor of its kings." All that for a 
jninuet ! 



MARRIAGE FESTIVITIES 139 

The public is rather amused by the presentation of 
this request by a bishop. On seeing certain new 
names among the old ones signed to it, some one 
remarks that the descendants of such or such persons 
would some day say with pride : " One of our ances- 
tors signed the famous request of the minuet, at the 
marriage of the grandson of Louis XV. ; so our 
name was then reckoned among the most illustrious 
of the monachy." The request was parodied as fol- 
lows : — 

" Ske, les grands de vos Etats 

Verront avec beaucoup de peine 

line princesse de Lorraine 

Sur eux au bal prendre le pas. 

Si Votre Majeste projette 

De les fletrir d'un tel affront, 

lis quitteront la cadenette, 

Et laisseront la les violons. 

Avisez-y, la ligue est faite. 

Signe : I'Eveque de Noyon, 

La Veaupaliere, Beaufremont, 

Clermont, Laval et De Villette." ^ 



1 Sire, the great of your state 
Behold with much pain 
A princess of Lorraine 
Preferred before them at the ball. 
If Your Highness project 
This affront to inflict, 
They will cut off their queues, 
And all dancing refuse. 
Take heed : all is said, 
The league has been made. 
Signed : the Bishop of Noyon, 
La Veaupaliei-e, Beaufremont, 
Clermont, Laval and De Villette. 



140 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

This is a new Fronde, a veritable insurrection. 
Louis XV. replies to the request by the following 
note : " The ambassador of the Emperor and the 
Empress-queen has asked me, on the part of his 
masters, to show some mark of distinction to Made- 
moiselle de Lorraine on the present occasion of the 
marriage of my grandson with the Archduchess 
Marie Antoinette. The dance at the ball being the 
only thing which could entail no consequences, since 
the choice of dancers depends solely on my will, 
without distinction of place, rank, or dignities, ex- 
cepting the princes and princess of my rank, who 
cannot be compared or put in rank with any other 
Frenchmen; and being unwilling, moreover, to in- 
novate in anywise on what is practised at my court, 
I rely upon it that the great and the nobles of my 
realm, seeing the fidelity, submission, attachment, 
and even friendship which they have always shown 
to me and my predecessors, will never be the occa- 
sion of anything that might displease me, especially 
in this occurrence, wherein I desire to prove my grati- 
tude to the Empress for the present she has made 
me, which I hope, as you do, will cause the happi- 
ness of the remainder of my days." Notwithstand- 
ing this, Louis XV. is obliged to go to the length of 
a threat. The ball at last takes place. Mademoiselle 
de Lorraine dances the minuet which provoked so 
many quarrels. Fireworks are set off the same 
evening on the terrace of the chateau, and are suc- 
ceeded by an illumination of the park, terminating, 



MABRIAGE FESTIVITIES 141 

at the extremity of the grand canal, in a splendid 
decoration representing the Temple of the Sun. The 
canal is covered with gaily decked barks. The great 
fountains are playing amidst the illuminations. The 
equestrian statue of the King is resplendent. The 
principal decoration represents the Temple of Hy- 
men. Surrounded by a sort of parapet at the four 
corners of which are dolphins who are vomiting 
flame from their yawning mouths, this multicolored 
temple rests against the statue of Louis XV. Near 
the statue, on the Seine side, rises the bastion from 
which the rockets stream upward in glittering 
sheaves. Acclamations resound. The crowd utter 
shouts of joy. All of a sudden a misdirected rocket 
falls on the yew trees and sets them afire. At the 
same time, the column of sightseers who are making 
their way to the boulevards though the rue Royale 
meets another column which is going toward Place 
Louis XV. They come into collision. The arrival 
of the firemen adds to the confusion. The moats of 
the Tuileries and the gardens of the place are so many 
precipices over which a quantity of victims fall. 
The cries of the wounded increase the terror. There 
is nothing but dead and dying people. All is horror 
and desolation on this accursed place, destined, be- 
fore the end of the century, to be the scene of so 
many crimes. 

At this moment a carriage, coming from the Cours- 
la-Reine, arrives at the Champs-Elysdes. In this car- 
riage is a young woman, still more adorned by the 



142 LAST YJEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

splendor of her grace and beauty than by the glitter 
of the precious stones shining in her hair and on her 
dress. It is the Dauphiness, entering Paris for the 
first time, — the Dauphiness, who wishes to see the 
illuminations of this place, marked by fatality. She 
is reflecting that to-day there has been no tempest, that 
the sky is clear this time, and that all hearts are glad. 
She herself rejoices to see this city of Paris, so beau- 
tiful and famous. But what is that she hears ? Are 
those cries of joy or of terror? The carriage stops. 
The Dauphiness asks what is going on. She is an- 
swered that blood is flowing on Place Louis XV.; 
that the number of the dead, though unknown as 
yet, is considerable, and that it will not do to go any 
further in a city so grievously stricken. The carriage 
retraces its road. Marie Antoinette returns discon- 
solate to Versailles, while the dead are being taken 
to the cemetery of the Madeleine, where, some years 
later, other victims will be deposited. Thus termi- 
nated the nuptial festivities of the martyr King and 
Queen. Such is the prologue to the tragedy which 
will wring tears from future eyes ; such are the first 
rumblings of the most terrible of tempests. 



VIII 

THE DAFPHmESS AND THE KOYAL FAMILY IK 1770 

THE painful impression produced by the catas- 
trophe on Place Louis XV. was soon dissipated. 
It was not long before it ceased to be spoken of 
except for the sake of praising the good feeling of 
the youthful pair, who had devoted their entire in- 
come for a year to the succor of the families stricken 
by the disaster. At this time, Marie Antoinette 
excited an almost frenzied admiration. France was 
literally raving over this fifteen-year-old Dauphiness, 
in whose honor the formulas of laudation and enthu- 
siasm were exhausted. People compared her to a 
consoling angel, a torch of hope, a morning star. 
There was a veritable lyrism, an interminable series 
of mythological comparisons, with the Venus de' 
Medici, the Atalanta of Marly, Flora, goddess of 
gardens, Hebe, radiant image of youth, Juno, queen 
of Olympus. France was on its knees. When this 
admirable Dauphiness made her ceremonious entry 
into Paris, her carriage disappeared under a rain of 
flowers. Prostrated before the altar at Notre Dame, 
the Princess seemed a celestial being, an ideal repre- 

143 



144 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

sentation of goodness and purity, poesy and prayer. 
When she showed herself on the balcony of the Tui- 
leries, there was an explosion of transport. '•'• Mon 
Dieu^ how many people ! " she exclaimed. " Madame," 
said the Duke de Brissac, " with all due deference to 
Monseigneur the Dauphin, they are all lovers who 
are looking at you." 

The Dauphin was good, honest, worthy of respect ; 
his devotion, his charity, the solid qualities of his 
heart, his love for the people, his humane and 
Christian sentiments, pointed him out as an object of 
public esteem; but it must be confessed that his 
appearance was not attractive. There was some- 
thing awkward in his gait, something wandering and 
uncertain in his glance, something abrupt in his man- 
ners, something rude in the sound of his voice, some- 
thing heavy in his whole person. One might have 
thought he was always afraid of being misled or 
betrayed. He kept himself on the defensive, embar- 
rassed in spite of the elevation of his rank, doubtful 
of himself in spite of the eulogies of those who flat- 
tered him, and seeming haughty at times through 
the very excess of his timidity. 

His two brothers did not resemble him in the least. 
The Count de Provence and the Count d'Artois 
were as self-confident as he was modest and re- 
served. One, the future Louis XVIH., was a wit, 
a great admirer of Horace, always ready with happy 
quotations, adroit, intelligent, clever, remarkable for 
precocious prudence and a wisely dissimulated ambi- 



THE BOYAL FAMILY IN 1770 145 

tion. The other, the future Charles X., was a young 
man, or rather a roguish boy, witty, full of gaiety 
and high spirits, already showing plainly that he 
would love women, horses, and pleasures to mad- 
ness. The two sisters of the three brothers, Madame 
Clotilde, the future Queen of Sardinia, and Madame 
Elisabeth, the future martyr, were, at the time of 
Marie Antoinette's arrival in France, two amiable 
and good little girls to whom the Dauphiness 
became sincerely attached. 

She displayed, also, a sincere affection for Louis 
XV., who, on his side, showed her much attention 
and sympathy. On seeing this charming Dau- 
phiness, so admired and so admirable, the old King 
experienced the satisfaction felt by Louis XIV. when 
the Duchess of Burgundy arrived at Versailles. 
The seductive daughter of the German Caesars re- 
stored life and movement to those vast apartments 
of the Queen, which had been deserted since the death 
of Marie Leczinska. She^had the chamber successively 
occupied by the wife of Louis XIV., the Duchess of 
Bavaria, the Duchess of Burgundy, and the wife of 
Louis XV.^ She rose between nine and ten in the 
morning, dressed, said her prayers, then breakfasted 
and went to see her aunts, where she usually found 
the King. The entries took place shortly before 
noon. The Dauphiness rouged herself and washed 
her hands before everybody. At noon, she was pres- 

1 Room No. 115 of M. SouliS's Notice du Musee. 



146 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

ent at Mass in the chapel. After Mass, she dined 
in public, with the Dauphin, in the room known as 
the Queen's antechamber.^ " The ushers," says 
Madame Campan, "suffered all decently dressed 
people to enter ; the sight was the delight of persons 
from the country. At the dinner hour there was 
nobody to be met on the stairs but honest folks, 
who, after having seen the Dauphiness take her 
soup, went to see the princes eat their bouilli, and 
then ran till they were out of breath to behold 
Mesdames at their dessert." Dinner was over at 
half-past one. The Dauphiness then went to the 
apartments of the Dauphin, which were just under- 
neath hers, and afterwards returned to her room, 
where she embroidered, read, wrote, and took lessons 
in literature and on the harpsichord; a promenade 
in the park and the environs, one or two visits to 
Mesdames, play from seven o'clock until nine, then 
supper, and then to bed at eleven ; such was the Prin- 
cess's way of life. Her principal society was that 
of her aunts, Mesdames Adelaide, Victoire, and 
Sophie, who in 1770 had arrived at the respective 
ages of thirty-eight, thirty-seven, and thirty-six. All 
three had remained unmarried. In spite of their 
exemplary moral conduct, they had their defects. 
Madame Adelaide liked to meddle in everything. 
She thought she had influence over her father, and 
the ministers were obliged to reckon with her. 

1 Koom No. 117 of M. Soulie's Notice du Musee. 



THE BOYAL FAMILY IN 1770 147 

Madame Victoire usually followed the directions of 
her elder sister, although her own mind was not 
inactive. As to Madame Sophie, she was upright 
but indolent. "Never did I see anybody," says 
Madame Campan, " who had such a frightened look ; 
she walked with extreme rapidity, and to recognize 
without looking at the people who made way for 
her, she had acquired a habit of glancing, sideways, 
like a hare. This Princess was so exceedingly diffi- 
dent that one might be with her daily, for years 
together, without hearing her utter a single word. 
. . . There were occasions, however, when she be- 
came all at once affable and condescending, and 
manifested the most communicative good nature ; 
this was when there was a storm ; she was afraid 
of it, and such was her alarm that she then ap- 
proached the humblest persons and would ask them 
a thousand obliging questions ; a flash of lightning 
made her squeeze their hands; a peal of thunder 
would drive her to embrace them." 

The youngest daughter of Louis XV., Madame 
Louise, was at the Carmelite convent of Saint Denis, 
and we have seen that the Dauphiness visited her 
there before going to Versailles. She received the 
habit, September 10, 1770, and Marie Antoinette was 
present at the ceremony. The Mass was said by the 
Papal Nuncio. Madame Louise of France, in religion 
Sister Ther^se Augustine, received communion. Be- 
fore taking the frieze habit of Carmel, the Princess 
put on for the last time a royal vestment, a robe em- 



148 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

broidered with silver and besprent with flowers of 
gold. Resplendent with the lustre of jewels, her 
head covered with a diadem, and beside her the lords 
and ladies who once composed her household, she 
made her appearance through clouds of incense. One 
might have thought it an apotheosis. A discourse 
was pronounced by the Bishop of Troyes which was 
so affecting that, according to the Abb^ Proyart, who 
describes the solemnity, everybody was wiping away 
tears except the courageous woman who caused them 
to flow. Then all the pomp disappeared. After hav- 
ing been absent for a moment, the King's daughter 
returned, dressed as a Carmelite, and received from 
the hands of the Dauphiness the mantle and the 
religious veil. 



IX 

MARIE ANTOINETTE AND MADAME DXJ BAEEY 

SURROUNDED by admiration and universal hom- 
age, Marie Antoinette appears at the summit of 
happiness. On the surface, her destiny is magnificent. 
But the depths of her heart are akeady sorrowful. 
The inexplicable coldness of her husband is not her 
only chagrin. Young as she is, she already begins to 
see the snares of every kind which malicious people 
are laying for her. Naive, gentle, ingenuous, she has 
been transported in spite of herself into an atmosphere 
of mean passions. Machiavellian calculations, and in- 
terminable intrigues. She is perforce the object of 
minute and often malicious inspection. All eyes are 
fixed upon her. Under an appearance of hyperbolical 
eulogies and enthusiastic adulations there are many 
criticisms, many jealousies ; and if one could believe 
it, many hatreds. Some people begrudged the Dau- 
phiness her youth and beauty. Converted coquettes, 
old maids, ambitious or intriguing women, find it hard 
to endure this superiority of birth, rank, grace, and 
beauty. Envy skilfully conceals itself under the 
mask of politics. The Dauphiness is censured as rep- 

149 



150 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

resenting the Austrian alliance ; an alliance which, 
they say, is contrary to the traditions of French 
diplomacy. They have a spite against her for being 
the daughter of the great Empress whose genius has 
wrought prodigies. The creatures of Madame Du 
Barry are offended by the young couple to whom 
belongs the future, and who are at present like the 
mute protest of virtue against vice, what is honest 
against what is scandalous. All the " Basils " of the 
court, and God knows there are plenty of them, would 
already be glad to begin softly, very quietly, on the 
sly, the calumnious murmurs whose crescendo is 
terrible. 

One of Marie Antoinette's sufferings came from the 
obligation of meeting the Du Barry, that worthless 
woman who wanted to treat with her as power to 
power, that woman whom Maria Theresa, perhaps a 
trifle too politic, had ordered her to treat with defer- 
ence, out of respect for Louis XV. ; that woman who 
is the enemy of the Duke de Choiseul, the principal 
partisan of the Austrian alliance at the court of Ver- 
sailles. Revolted in her youthful pride, throwing 
back her fine and haughty head, the Dauphiness re- 
members the blood which flows in her veins, the 
lightning which flashes in her eyes, and the daughter 
of Ceesars conceives disgust for the favorite who is 
debasing the throne. She writes to Maria Theresa, 
July 9, 1770 : " The King shows me a thousand kind- 
nesses, and I love him tenderly, but it is pitiable to 
see the weakness he has for Madame Du Barry, who is 



THE BAUPHINESS AND MADAME DU BABBY 151 

the most stupid and impertinent creature imaginable." 
The two women are on opposite sides in politics ; one 
desires Choiseul's retention in the ministry, the other 
his dismissal. Two camps are formed, the excite- 
ment is keen ; Madame Du Barry will triumph. The 
Duke de Choiseul, intoxicated by success, and long 
accustomed to vanquish all obstacles, has come to be- 
lieve himself not merely necessary, but indispensable. 
The powerful minister would have been willing to 
say of his enemies just what the Duke de Guise said 
shortly before he was struck down : " They would 
not dare." The political chessboard was so compli- 
cated, that a man like him, who knew all the pieces 
so well, believed that Louis XV. would not have the 
courage to dismiss him. Baron de Gleichen, one of 
Choiseul's best friends, thought him imprudent to the 
point of blundering. " It would have been very easy 
for him," says the Baron in his curious Souvenirs, "to 
come to terms with Madame Du Barry, who would 
have asked nothing better than to be delivered from 
the rapacious and tyrannous claws of her brother-in- 
law, her protectors, and all the rouds whose instru- 
ment she was. She was a good-natured creature, 
moreover, who disliked being employed to do harm, 
and whose joyous humor would have made her dote 
on M. de Choiseul as soon as she began to know him. 
The King would certainly have done the impossible to 
favor and consolidate the union between his favorite 
and his minister, whom he was very sorry to lose ; 
nothing proves this better than a billet he wrote him 



152 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

towards the last, when they wrote oftener than they 
saw each other. M. de Choiseul complaining to his 
master of a horrible annoyance by which he was men- 
aced, the latter replied, ' What you imagine is false ; 
people deceive you ; be on your guard against those 
who surround you whom I do not like. You do not 
know Madame Du Barry ; all France would be at her 
feet, if . . . Signed: Louis.' Does not this billet, 
which I have seen, express the wish for an ar- 
rangement, a prayer to lend himself to it, and the 
avowal, strange enough from a king, that the simple 
suffrage of his minister would do more than all that 
lay in his royal power? "^ This reflection which is 
added by M. de Gleichen, is in the taste and style of 
the eighteenth century : " It is most astonishing that 
the sensitive heart of M. de Choiseul could have re- 
sisted so much kindness, the desire to play a trick on 
his enemies, and the certaint}^ of reigning more com- 
fortably by the aid of a woman who would have been 
entirely at his orders." 

The Duke de Choiseul had been the favorite of the 
Marquise de Pompadour. It was not morality, then, 
which prevented his being on good terms with the 
Countess Du Barry, for, from the point of view of 
scandal, the two mistresses were on an equality, and 
from the point of view of the goodness of character, 
the Countess was much better than the Marquise. 



i Souvenirs de Baron de Qleichen, preceded Tby a notice by M. 
Paul Grimblot. 



TBE BAUPHINESS AND MADAME BU BABBY 153 

The great noble, prouder of his person than of his 
place, the audacious statesman, more influential, more 
flattered than his master, and saying to those about 
him : " Don't outbid the King ; that is not worth 
while," the brilliant duke and peer who remembered 
that in former times a man of his rank would have 
thought he degraded himself by accepting a place as 
secretary of state, and who fancied he was doing a 
great honor to Louis XV. in being willing to be his 
minister, Choiseul, infatuated with his triumphs, was 
no longer the skilful courtier of the days of Madame 
de Pompadour. 

The idea of inclining before an inferior sultana 
revolted the pride of this grand vizier who did not 
dread the bowstring. As has been very well said 
by M. Jobez in his book, La France sous Louis XV., 
he was "one of those men of pleasure who occupy 
themselves with public affairs as a diversion agreea- 
ble to both their imagination and their vanity." He 
would not endure anything contrary to his conven- 
ience or his tastes. Madame Du Barry displeased 
him ; he defied her. To believe that the minister who 
had concluded the family compact and annexed 
Corsica to France ; who had dared to break a lance in 
the face of the most powerful of modern associa- 
tions, the Jesuits ; who was the idol of the nobility, 
the Parliaments and the philosophers; who, cele- 
brated in every tone by all the trumpets of Fame, 
had been able to make himself feared and admired by 
Europe, — ■ to believe that he, the Duke de Choiseul, 



154 LAST YEAB8 OF LOUIS XV. 

would be sacrificed to a creature of the Du Barry 
sort, seemed to him unlikely and absurd. 

It was this, however, which occurred. Let us 
affirm, for the rest, that the enmity of the Countess 
was not the sole cause of the minister's downfall. If 
he was upheld by the Dauphiness, he had an adversary 
in the Dauphin, because, several years before, he had 
said to the father of this Prince : " Monseigneur, I 
shall perhaps have some day the misfortune to be 
your subject, but I will never have that of being 
your servant." Religious people reproached him 
with the expulsion of the Jesuits and the friendship 
of Voltaire. The conservatives accused him of a 
weakness for the Parliaments. The peace party 
found his foreign policy bungling and disquieting. 
They accused him of being on the point of doing 
what Louvois had done under the reign of Louis 
XIV., of setting Europe afire in order to prove that 
the Ministry of War had been well conducted. 
Louis XV., who grew more timid as he grew older, 
became frightened, possibly not without reason. 
The alliance of the Northern courts already existed 
in principle. England was menacing. A conflict 
between the English and the Spanish had just broken 
out in the Falkland Islands. Louis XV. was per- 
suaded of the imminence of a coalition, and a new 
Seven Years' War, which would be due, said they, 
to the imprudence and levity of Choiseul. The 
enemies of the minister then apprised Madame Du 
Barry that the time had come to be done with him. 



THE DAUPHIN ESS AND MADAME DU BABBY 155 

The story-tellers pretend tliat, tossing up oranges, 
sb.e exclaimed, bursting with laughter : " Skip, Choi- 
seul! skip, Praslin!" They add that, after having 
announced to Louis XV. that she had just discharged 
her cook, she said to her royal lover: "I have got 
rid of my Choiseul; when will you get rid of 
J — ^^ . 

December 24, 1770, the minister received the fol- 
lowing letter from the King: — 

"My Cousin, — The discontent caused me by your 
services forces me to exile you to Chanteloup, 
whither you will repair within twenty-four hours. 
I would have sent you further, if it were not for 
the particular esteem I have for Madame the Duch- 
ess de Choiseul, whose health interests me much. 
Take care that your conduct does not make me 
take another course. Whereupon, I pray God, my 
cousin, that He may have you in His holy keeping. 
Signed: Louis." 

Then was seen, as has been remarked by M. Henri 
Martin, what had never been seen before, — the court 
faithful to the person in disgrace. During the few 
hours that elapsed before the Duke and Duchess de 
Choiseul quitted Paris, an innumerable crowd of 
great lords and ladies, magistrates, military men, 
citizens, men of letters, came to inscribe their 
names on the register of his house. The young 
Duke de Chartres, that prince who was afterwards 
to be called Philippe-Egalit^, forced his way in to 
throw himself into the arms of the exiled min- 



156 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

ister.^ The highest personages solicited the King's 
authorization to pay visits to Chanteloup. Did this 
signify that human nature was better, more gener- 
ous, than at other epochs? Not at all. It was 
simply that opposition was then in fashion. It was 
thought, moreover, that Choiseul would return to 
power. Count de Segur has said in his Memoirs : — 
"The King remained almost alone in his mistress's 
boudoir. A column put up at Chanteloup, on which 
the numerous visitors of the exile inscribed their 
names, served as a monument of this new Fronde. 
The impressions of youth are keen, and never shall 
I forget that produced in me by the pleasure of 
seeing my father's name and mine traced on this 
column of opposition, the presage of other resistances 
which afterwards assumed such grave importance. 
. . . From one end of the kingdom to the other, 
people made a point of honor of the opposition; to 
lofty minds it seemed a duty, to generous men a 
virtue, to the philosophers a useful weapon to regain 
liberty; in fine, a means of becoming conspicuous, 
and, so to say, a fashion which the young seized 
upon with ardor. The Parliaments made remon- 
strances, the preachers sermons, the philosophers 
books, the young courtiers epigrams. Feeling that 
the government was in unskilful hands, everybody 
defied a government which no longer inspired either 
confidence or respect." 

1 See M. de Grasset's interesting work, Madame de Choiseul et 
son Temps. 1 vol. Didier. 



THE BAUPHINESS AND MADAME DU BARHY 157 

Madame Du Barry, little adapted to political con- 
tests, was all surprise at her victory. Marie Antoi- 
nette had seen, and not without keen vexation, the 
downfall of a friend devoted to the house of Austria. 
Alarmed by this event, Maria Theresa desired her 
daughter to treat the powerful favorite with defer- 
ence. But the disgust which this woman inspired 
in the Dauphiness was daily on the increase. Count 
de Mercy- Argenteau wrote to the Empress, Septem- 
ber 2, 1771: "Your Majesty will have deigned to 
observe in my first and very humble report, that 
Monsieur the Dauphin had approved of my represen- 
tations as to the utility it would be to Madame the 
Dauphiness not to treat the Countess Du Barry too 
badly. This point appears to me more essential than 
ever, because it is the focus of all the annoyances 
and regrettable proceedings into which the King 
might allow himself to be drawn in order to show 
his resentment toward his children. The occasions 
which I have had to see this favorite have given 
me an opportunity to become acquainted with her; 
she seems to have little intelligence, and much 
levity and vanity, yet without displaying a wicked 
or hateful character. It is very easy to make her 
talk, and in many cases one can profit largely by 
her indiscretion. I am certain that if Madame the 
Dauphiness could be induced to speak to her only 
once, it would then be very easy for me to curb any 
further pretensions and to prevent the thousand 
embarrassments arising from the singular position 
of the interior of this court." 



158 LAST TEAMS OF LOUIS XV. 

Maria Theresa abounded in the same sense as her 
ambassador. She wrote a letter, September 30, 1771, 
to Marie Antoinette, in which she recommended her 
to treat Madame Du Barry as a lady admitted to the 
court and the society of the King. Declaring that 
the Dauphiness, as first subject of the sovereign, 
owed obedience and submission to Louis XV., she 
added : " You owe the example to the court and the 
courtiers, that the wishes of your master should be 
executed. If base actions or familiarities were re- 
quired of you, neither I nor any one else could 
counsel them to you, but an indifferent word, certain 
attentions, not for the lady, but for your grandfather, 
your master, your benefactor ! " In spite of all Maria 
Theresa could say, it was none the less regrettable 
that a grandfather should wish to impose such an 
associate on the wife of his grandson. 

This was a real suffering for the legitimate pride 
of Marie Antoinette. "The ascendancy taken by 
the Countess Du Barry over the King's mind has 
scarcely any bounds," wrote Count de Mercy, Decem- 
ber 19, 1771; "it visibly influences whatever con- 
cerns the royal family, and the more the favorite is 
mortified by ill treatment, the more use she seeks to 
make of advantageous moments to show her resent- 
ment." Count de Mercy, acting on the instructions 
of the Empress, did not cease trying to induce the 
Dauphiness to be polite to the favorite, and ended by 
gaining his cause in a certain measure. He relates 
it with satisfaction in a letter written to Maria 



THE DAUPHINESS AND MADAME DU BABBY 159 

Theresa, August 14, 1772. He says that Madame 
Du Barry having arrived after the King's Mass, with 
the Duchess d'Aiguillon, "Madame the Dauphiness 
spoke to the latter; turning toward the favorite 
afterward, she made some remarks about the weather 
and the hunting parties, in such a way that, without 
directly addressing the Countess Du Barry, the latter 
might nevertheless believe that these remarks were 
made to her as much as to the Duchess d'Aiguillon. 
Nothing more was needed to make the favorite very 
well contented. The King, apprised of what had 
passed, seemed much satisfied with it, and showed 
as much to Madame the Dauphiness by the little 
attentions he paid her the same evening at the 
state dinner." 

Marie Antoinette, however, in spite of her desire 
to conform to her mother's recommendations, could 
not conceal the repugnance inspired in her by the 
woman whose favor was such a shameful scandal. 

In a letter addressed to her mother, January 21, 
1772, the Dauphiness was unable to dissimulate her 
feelings of revolt against certain requirements: 
"Madame my very dear mother," said she, "you may 
well believe that I will always sacrifice my preju- 
dices and repugnances, so long as nothing ostenta- 
tious or contrary to honor is proposed to me. It 
would be the unhappiness of my life if misunder- 
standings arose between my two families ; my heart 
will always be for my own, my duties here will be 
very hard to fulfil. I shudder at this idea." 



160 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

Marie Antoinette's noble candor stung Maria 
Theresa to the quick. The Empress, accustomed to 
domination both as mother and sovereign, replied 
to her daughter, February 13: "You have made me 
laugh by fancying that either I or my minister could 
ever give you counsels against honor, or even against 
the least decorum. Such traits show what a hold 
prejudices and unwise counsels have on your mind. 
Your agitation after a few words makes one tremble 
for you. What interest could I have but your good 
and even that of your State, the Dauphin's happiness 
and your own, the critical situation in which you 
and all the realm and the family find yourselves, the 
intrigues and factions ? Who can advise you better 
than my minister, who knows the kingdom thor- 
oughly and the instruments at work there. ... It 
is necessary to follow all the counsels, without 
exception, which he will give you, and, by a meas- 
ured and consistent course of conduct to undertake 
to satisfy everybody." 

If Maria Theresa insisted with so much vivacity, 
it was because she knew that at this very moment 
the powers hostile to Austria were redoubling their 
efforts to conciliate the favorite and break the 
alliance between the courts of Vienna and Ver- 
sailles. "We know for sure," she wrote to her 
ambassador, " that England and the King of Prussia 
want to gain over the Du Barry; you ought to know 
better than I if you think the thing is so. The 
King is constant in his friendships, and I dare 



THE BAJIPHINESS AND MADAME DU BABBY 161 

appeal to his heart; but he is feeble, his surround- 
ings do not leave him time to think. ... If 
France smirks with Prussia, which will surely betray 
her, then I must tell you that this is the only point 
where I could not prevent myself from changing, 
even to my great regret; but that would be infal- 
lible. To prevent these evils and annoyances for 
the monarchy and the family everything must be 
employed, and there is no one but my daughter, the 
Dauphiness, assisted by your counsels and acquaint- 
ance with the locality, who could render this service 
to her family and her country. Above all, she must 
cultivate the good graces of the King by her assiduity 
and affection; let her try to divine his thoughts, 
avoid shocking him in any way, and treat the fa- 
vorite well. I do not require base actions, still less 
intimacies, but the attentions due in consideration 
of her grandfather and master, and of the good which 
may result for us and our two courts ; perhaps the 
alliance depends on it." O nothingness of human 
grandeurs! A woman of mind, of heart, of genius, 
a Maria Theresa, subordinating the friendships of 
the most powerful empires on earth, the maintenance 
of the general equilibrium, the destinies of Europe, 
to the goodwill of a Du Barry! The unfortunate 
Marie Antoinette, more to be pitied than envied, in 
spite of all her ^clat, her beauty, and prestige, began 
to become what she was to be until her death ; the 
victim of policy. 



THE DAUPHINESS AND MARIA THEEESA 

HISTORY does not contain a more curious cor- 
respondence than that between the Empress 
Maria Theresa and her ambassador at Versailles, 
Count de Mercy- Argenteau. Never perhaps was the 
character of a sovereign and the talent of a diplo- 
matist revealed in a more striking manner. Maria 
Theresa shows herself completely in her letters. 
What we have here is the political woman accus- 
tomed to power and domination; the woman of 
brains who sees, knows, and directs everything; the 
mother who inspires her children with fear and 
veneration ; the sovereign who occupies herself with 
the same solicitude and the same authority in her 
family and her empire. Her counsels are like 
orders, her language is the language of command. 
Although her daughter may have become a French- 
woman, she always regards her as a German prin- 
cess, and would like to make of her a sort of 
Austrian ambassadress, accredited to Louis XV., but 
subordinate to Count de Mercy. Astonished that a 
young girl of fifteen should not have the penetration, 

162 



THE DAUPHINE8S AND MAEIA THEBES A 163 

the experience, the maturity of a matron, the Em- 
press does not admit the right in Marie Antoinette 
to have the slightest imperfection. To her, the 
Dauphiness always remains the schoolgirl of Schon- 
brun and the Burg. 

Like all those who govern, Maria Theresa has a 
passion to be well informed. The most minute 
details interest her. She wants to know the least 
particulars of the physical and moral life of her 
daughter. Nothing escapes her. She thinks of 
everything : toilettes, reading, conversations, dances, 
promenades, all pass under her rigorous, incessant 
control. Were she installed in the chateau of 
Versailles she could not know all its detours in a 
more thorough manner. She does inhabit it in 
spirit; she knows all the secrets, all the snares. 
Take care! she says to her daughter every minute. 
Knowing the French character as well as if she 
had lived in France all her life, she knows what to 
think of human levity, malice, ingratitude, and 
cowardice, and what a fund of envy and meanness 
exists in the character of many courtiers. The 
Capitol does not make her forget the Tarpeian rock 
for her daughter, and at certain moments she utters 
such dismal words, she casts such an unquiet look 
toward the future, that one might think that, divin- 
ing the destiny of her Antoinette, she sees the 
scaffold in the misty distance. 

On his side, the correspondent of the Empress is 
a model of diplomacy. Supple, active, reserved, 



164 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XF. 

knowing how to put himself on good terms with 
all who can be useful to his government, agreeable 
to Louis XV. and the royal family, to the Duke de 
Choiseul and the Duke d'Aiguillon, to the devotees 
and to Madame Du Barry, an observer of the first 
order and an indefatigable worker, exact to minutiae, 
prudent to exaggeration, skilful in handling all the 
pieces of the most complicated diplomatic chess- 
board. Count de Mercy-Argenteau is in love with 
his profession. When he addresses his ve7'i/ humble 
reports to his sovereign, he brings to them an exces- 
sive care and zeal; if he happens to receive the 
felicitations of the Sacred Majesty, as he always 
calls the Empress, he breaks into transports of joy. 
The letters he wrote to Maria Theresa independently 
of his official despatches, form a veritable journal of 
the existence of the Dauphiness. Everything is 
there with its date and hour. The ambassador 
knows what passes in the salons of the Princess, 
and knows also what does not pass in her alcove. 
A chambermaid, a physician, what am I saying? 
A confessor would not be better informed. 

As to the Dauphiness, she is still a child. Sweet, 
simple, ingenuous, incredulous of evil, mocking a 
little at etiquette, sincerely pious, but with an 
always amiable piety, regretting Vienna but loving 
Versailles, German by her memories but French by 
her heart, full of respect and affection for her august 
mother but finding her at times a trifle too severe, 
the seductive Princess, on account of the inexplic- 



THE DAUPHINESS AND MABIA THERESA 165 

able coldness of her husband, is still a young girl 
although a married woman. 

If she has some little defects, if from time to time 
she can be accused of some trifling imprudences 
which one day she will expiate in a manner so 
cruel, they are the imprudences and defects which 
have the excuse of youth and also its charm. Marie 
Antoinette, and it is this which gives her physiog- 
nomy something so sympathetic and so graciously 
feminine, Marie Antoinette has the spirit of her age, 
its gaiety, sprightliness, unconcern. This amiable 
Dauphiness, who calls Louis XV. papa, and who 
throws her arms about his neck without asking his 
permission; who, still a child herself, takes her 
chief pleasure in the society of children, and who, 
when she sees her lady of honor appear, the severe 
and punctilious Countess de Noailles, says with a 
laugh : " Now let us behave properly ; here comes 
Madame I'Etiquette;" this Princess, so natural and 
charming, contrasts with her surroundings as spring 
does with winter. She resembles the young trees 
full of sap which grow freely in the fields, and not 
those puny shrubs in the park of Versailles which 
cannot grow except under rule and square. Her 
simplicity is her most beautiful ornament. Her 
richest diadem is her long fair hair. Not one of 
her jewels can be compared to the sparkle of 
her eyes. 

Well, if one can believe it, this Princess whose 
innocence and gentleness should soften all hearts, 



166 LAST rUARS OF LOUIS XT, 

is already surrounded by enemies. Mercy-Argen- 
teau wrote to Maria Theresa, April 16, 1771: "It 
is almost impossible that Your Majesty should form 
a very exact idea of the horrible confusion prevailing 
here in everything. The throne is debased by the 
extension of the favorite's credit and the malevo- 
lence of her partisans. The nation vents itself in 
seditious proposals and indecent writings in which 
the person of the monarch is not spared. I have not 
hesitated to make these representations to Madame 
the Dauphiness, and have frequently called her 
attention to the fact that the only possible means 
of avoiding the inconveniences of a time so critical 
is to keep profound silence concerning things as 
well as persons, and Her Royal Highness begins to 
feel the necessity of this method." The frank and 
expansive young girl must conduct herself like an 
old diplomatist. She must measure and calculate 
each gesture, each word, even her very silence. 
Everything is noted, commented on, and criticised. 
Underneath its majestic exterior this court is a 
veritable ant-hill of petty passions, petty intrigues. 
There is nothing but mines and countermines, am- 
bushes, coalitions, cabals. There is Madame Du 
Barry's camp, which is that of the ministers, that 
of Madame Adelaide and her sisters, the camp of 
the Duke de Choiseul's friends, and even that of 
the Count de Provence, who, though so young, is 
already a wily politician. The Dauphiness is spied 
upon in the most odious manner. Her letters, her 



TnE DAUPHINE8S AND MABIA THEBES A 167 

composition books, are read, and pages of them are 
torn out, evidently with a view to imitating her 
handwriting. It troubles her to find that there are 
double keys to her furniture. In order to preserve 
her mother's letters, she is obliged to hide them 
under her pillows. 

Maria Theresa is intensely preoccupied by this 
whole state of affairs. She is especially displeased 
with Mesdames. Although she recognizes their 
solid qualities and incontestable virtue, she is 
jealous of them, and is constantly criticising them; 
she will not admit that these princesses have the 
right to give their young niece the least advice. 
"I own to you," she writes to Count de Mercy- 
Argenteau, February 11, 1771, "that in the stormy 
circumstances of the court of France, my daughter's 
situation greatly disturbs me. Her nonchalance, 
her slight inclination for all serious application, her 
indiscretion (caused by her youth and vivacity), her 
relations with her aunts, and particularly with 
Madame Adelaide, who is perhaps the most intrigu- 
ing and best known of the sisters, furnish me with 
more than one subject of fear." Maria Theresa, who 
is German to the ends of her finger-nails, and who 
has no liking for the French nation, although she 
sought the alliance of the court of Versailles, expe- 
riences, moreover, a sort of jealousy of the affec- 
tion manifested for her new country by the former 
Archduchess. "People have a right to be aston- 
ished," she writes to her, "at the slight cordiality 



168 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

and interest that you have for Germans. Believe 
me, the Frenchman will esteem and rely upon you 
more if he finds in you the German solidity and 
frankness. Don't be ashamed to be German even 
to awkwardness." One comprehends that a young 
Dauphiness of France would need a good deal of 
filial respect not to become a trifle impatient under 
this by far too Germanic advice. The Empress is 
sounder when, still using severe, but this time very 
sensible, language, she writes to her daughter, July 
9, 1771 : " I expect in vain every month the list of 
your reading and your occupations. . . . At your 
age, levities and puerilities are easily excused, but 
in the long run they tire everybody and you too; 
they will make you very uncomfortable. ... I 
cannot conceal from you that people are already 
beginning to talk about them, and by that you will 
lose the grand idea that has been formed of you, an 
essential point for us who are on the theatre of the 
great world. A life constantly dissipated, without 
the slightest serious occupation, will affect even 
your conscience." 

There are moments when the mother's exhorta- 
tions to her daughter are veritable lectures, when 
her pen is like a ferule. One may judge of them 
by this letter of September 30, in the same year, 
wherein, after complaining especially because the 
Dauphiness is not gracious enough toward Madame 
Du Barry, the imperious sovereign wrathfully ex- 
claims : " You are so greatly lacking toward your ben- 



TEE BAUPHINESS AND MAEIA THERESA 169 

efactor on the very first occasion when you can oblige 
him ! . . . Observe now for whom ? By a shame- 
ful wish to please people who have enthralled you 
by treating you as a child, by procuring you rides 
on horseback and on donkeys, with children, with 
dogs; such are the great reasons which attach you 
by preference to them rather than to your master, 
and which in the long run will make you ridiculous, 
neither loved nor esteemed. You began so well. 
Your appearance, your judgment, when not controlled 
by others, is always correct and what it should be. 
... I require you to convince the King of your 
respect and tenderness by all your actions, consider- 
ing on every occasion what will please him. . . . 
Even should you be obliged to embroil yourself with 
all the others, you have but one sole aim, — to please 
the King and do his will." 

Marie Antoinette, accustomed to respect her mother 
as much as God himself, always bends before this 
authority which admits of no reply. Sometimes she 
happens to forget certain recommendations, but she 
is assuredly excusable. As Count de Mercy writes 
the Empress in a letter of June 16, 1772, "the bad 
manners of her companions, the habit of receiv- 
ing neither reprimand nor contradiction nor even 
advice from the King, nor from Monsieur the 
Dauphin either, and the three hundred leagues 
which separate her from you, are doubtless the 
reasons why severe letters have not always produced 
the desired effect." Moreover, Maria Theresa re- 



170 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

lents at times. From the tone of reprimand she 
passes to that of tenderness. Occasionally her 
maternal admiration speaks in accents worthy of 
Madame de S^vignd. She writes to her daughter, 
October 31, 1771: "You have something so touch- 
ing in your whole person that it is hard to deny 
jou anything; this is a gift of God for which you 
should thank Him, and use it for His glory and 
the welfare of others." It is because she would like 
to have her perfect, both physically and morally, 
that she says in a letter of December 31, 1772: 
"What! the Antoinette of twelve or thirteen years 
knew how to receive her company very prettily, and 
say something polite and gracious to every one ; this 
truth has been evident to all Vienna, the whole 
Empire, Lorraine, and France, — and is the Dau- 
phiness now to be embarrassed by a simple private 
person ? Do not accustom yourself to these frivolous 
excuses; embarrassment, fear, timidity, chimeras I 
People employ such terms as those without reflec- 
tion, to excuse a bad habit of not incommoding 
themselves. You know how you have gained hearts 
by affability; you see the opposite of that daily; 
can you allow yourself to neglect this important 
point. I am ending the old year with my sermons ; 
you will wrong me if you do not accept them as the 
greatest mark of my tenderness and the interest 
I take in your future welfare, with which I am 
continually occupied." 

Marie Antoinette, who is all goodness and sensi- 



THE BAUPHINE8S AND MABIA THERESA 171 

bility, bears her mother no ill will for her often 
severely given counsels, and her filial piety is never 
in fault. One should read, in a letter of Count de 
Mercy-Argenteau, February 29, 1772, the account of 
the grief inspired in this charming Dauphiness by 
the news that her mother was slightly ill: "The 
first word troubled Madame the Dauphiness so 
greatly that she could hear nothing further. She 
returned to her cabinet, dissolved in tears, and 
unable to say anything except that she was not in 
a condition to give audience. She asked for a rosary 
Your Majesty had given her, and began to pray. 
Monsieur the Dauphin, who did not leave her, 
seemed to share very sincerely the grief of his 
august spouse." 

Maria Theresa sometimes complains that her 
daughter's letters are not long enough. This is 
because she has not a clear notion of the difSculties 
the young Princess encounters when she tries to 
write to her in peace. As M. de Mercy-Argenteau 
tells her, Marie Antoinette always writes quickly, 
lest she should be surprised either by her husband 
or her aunts, to whom she never shows the letters 
she addresses to her mother. Her correspondence is 
certainly not a masterpiece of style. But, honestly, 
could one expect a young German girl to write 
French like a member of the Academy? At least, 
the letters of Marie Antoinette, simple, natural, and 
without literary pretension, have the advantage of 
proving a good heart, a pure conscience, a character 
full of frankness. 



172 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

When one goes to the bottom of history instead 
of studying nothing but the surface, what especially 
strikes one is the slight difference that exists 
between sovereigns and ordinary people. Does not 
the great Maria Theresa, the illustrious Empress, 
remind one, in spite of all her prestige, of those 
good middle-class women who are constantly telling 
their daughters to sit up straight ? Palaces, thatched 
hovels, garrets, the same joys and sorrows, passions 
and vexations, are found under the roof of each. 

To sum up, there is nothing grave in the reproaches 
which Maria Theresa addresses to her daughter, and 
at any other epoch the Dauphiness would have 
received nothing but praise. But at that time 
people were inclined to criticise everything, and the 
first breath of the Revolution was agitating French 
society. 

As yet, however, the delightful, the incomparable, 
Dauphiness is the idol of the court and the nation. 
What charm! what brilliancy! what attractions! 
How she eclipses all other women ! What a differ- 
ence there is between her and her sisters-in-law, the 
Countess de Provence and the Countess d'Artois! 
Everywhere and always, Marie Antoinette is the 
first, in grace as well as beauty. One would say 
she is already on the throne. When, at the begin- 
ning of the second act of Gluck's Iphigenia, the 
chorus exclaims: "Sing, let us celebrate our queen," 
the public turns toward the Dauphiness and salute 
her enthusiastically, as if her reign had already 



THE DAUPRINESS AND MABIA THERESA 173 

begun. How she animates by lier gaiety, how she 
illumines by her smile, this grand palace of Versailles 
which, without her, would be so dismal ! What life 
there is in the private balls which she gives every 
Monday in her apartments ! People dance there for 
the pleasure of dancing, without ceremony and with- 
out etiquette. The ladies come in white dominos, 
and the men in their ordinary attire. Here shines 
one of the most poetic and sympathetic of women, 
the Princess de Lamballe, that twenty-year-old 
widow who will be Marie Antoinette's best and 
most faithful friend ; the Princess de Lamballe, who 
surrounds with such affectionate cares her father-in- 
law, that venerable Duke de Penthievre, to whom 
Florian said, in dedicating to him a Biblical poem:^ 

" Pieux comme Booz, austere avec douceur, 
Vous aimez les humains et craignez le Seigneur. 
Helas ! un se\il soutien manque k votre f amille ; 
Vous n'epousez pas Ruth, mais vous I'avez pour fille." ^ 

At these Monday balls, to which only the ^lite of 
the nobility are admitted, and invitations to which 
make people so proud and happy, those young men 
make their appearance in society who are about to 



^ See M. de Lescure's interesting work : La Frincesse de Lam- 
balle. 

2 Pious like Boaz, gentle though austere, 
You love mankind and yet the Lord you fear. 
One prop your family yet lacks, alas ! 
You wed not Kuth, who takes a daughter's place. 



174 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

become all the rage, the great liberal lords, the 
chevaliers of new France, the Lafayette, Lauzun, La 
Marck, Segur, Dillon, Noailles, Lametli. The Mon- 
day festivities are not enough. Other balls are 
given on Wednesday, in the apartment of the Coun- 
tess de Noailles, Marie Antoinette's lady of honor. 
The Dauphiness comes there for the first time on 
the arm of her husband, who says to the Countess 
on entering : " I hope, Madame, that you will kindly 
receive the husband and the wife; we do not come 
here to cause embarrassment, but to share your 
amusements. "1 

The Dauphin and the Count de Provence dance 
rather clumsily; on the other hand, the Count 
d'Artois, that type of the elegant gentleman, is an 
accomplished dancer. As to Marie Antoinette, as 
graceful as beautiful, as lively as she is charming, 
she has the gait of a goddess. 

Et vera incessa patuit dea . . . 

Her only defect is that of being slightly satirical. 
Like Count de La Marck, she makes a jest of what 
is ugly or unpleasant. She loves young people, she 
wishes them to be gay, to amuse themselves and 
banish gloomy thoughts. How full of life she is 
those winters of 1771 and 1772, when, in company 
with the Princess de Lamballe, she enjoys her favor- 



1 Count de Mercy-Argenteau's letter to Maria Theresa, Feb- 
ruary 25, 1771. 



THE BATJPHINE8S AND MABIA THEBES A 175 

ite amusement, those sleigh-rides which are like a 
vision of Northern poetry! And how majestic, on 
the 8th of June, 1773, the day of her ceremonious 
entry into Paris, when, in a gala carriage resplendent 
with gold and drawn by eight horses, followed by 
five other equipages not less magnificent, she goes, 
in great pomp, first to Notre Dame, afterwards to 
the church of Saint Genevieve, and finally to the pal- 
ace of the Tuileries. 

The air is rent with enthusiastic cries, all hats 
are flung up, all hearts are enraptured, all hands 
beat wild applause. The cry. Long live the Dau- 
phiness! issues from every breast. At every step 
the Princess hears them saying: "How pretty she 
is I How beautiful ! How good she looks ! " A rain 
of flowers descends from every balcony, every win- 
dow. This is not merely joy and admiration; it 
is intoxication, delirium. Moved to the very depths 
of her soul, and forgetting this time all her sorrows 
and presentiments, Marie Antoinette joyfully de- 
scribes to her mother this unparalleled festivity, the 
remembrance of which will be so sweet. 

"On returning from the promenade," she writes, 
June 14, 1773, "we climbed an open terrace (at the 
Tuileries) and remained there half an hour. I can- 
not tell you, my dear mamma, what transports of 
affection were displayed for us at this moment. 
Before leaving it we waved our hands to the people, 
which gave them great pleasure. How fortunate we 
are in our position to gain the friendship of a whole 



176 LAST YEAES OF LOUIS XV. 

people so cheaply! And yet tliere is nothing so 
precious; I felt that thoroughly, and shall never 
forget it. Another point which caused great pleas- 
ure on this beautiful day was the conduct of Mon- 
sieur the Dauphin. He made wonderful replies to 
all the addresses, noticed everything that had been 
done for him, and especially the joy and eagerness 
of the people, to whom he displayed great goodness. 
. . . To-morrow we are going to the Opera at 
Paris ; this is greatly desired, and I even think we 
shall go two other days to the French and Italian 
Comedies. Every day I am more and more sensible 
of what my dear mamma has done for my establish- 
ment. I was the youngest of all, and she has treated 
me as if I were the eldest ; hence my soul is filled 
with the most tender thankfulness." 



XI 

THE PAVILION OF LTJCIENNES 

MADAME DU BARRY throned it like a 
queen. At last she had succeeded in being 
able to assume, whenever the notion took her, the 
manners and language of the great ladies. Choos- 
ing her associates from among women of the highest 
rank, a Mardchale de Luxembourg, a Duchess 
d'Aiguillon, a Marechale de Mirepoix, she received 
dukes and peers, ministers and ambassadors. When 
Gustavus III., King of Sweden, came to the court 
of France, in 1771, he offered a very rich collar to 
the favorite's little dog. The policy of Madame 
Du Barry, if one admits that a woman of that sort 
can have a policy, was more authoritative, more 
conservative, than that of Madame de Pompadour. 
Madame Du Barry did not rely upon the philoso- 
phers, and always alarming Louis XV. about the 
danger of parliaments, she incessantly reminded 
him of the example of princes who, like Charles I., 
allow their royal prerogatives to be attacked. At 
the auction of Baron de Thiers's effects, she bought 
a portrait of that unhappy monarch for twenty-four 

177 



178 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

thousand livres, and it is asserted that, showing this 
painting to Louis XV., she said to him: "France, 
do you see this picture ? If you let your Parliament 
go on, it will cut off your head, as the English Par- 
liament did to Charles." 

The sense of danger restored to the old sovereign 
a vigor which assured his tranquillity so long as he 
lived. The Parliament had assumed a factious atti- 
tude in consequence of its quarrels with the Duke 
d' Aiguillon. Declaring that " its members, in their 
profound affliction, found their minds not sufficiently 
free to give decisions on the property, life, and honor 
of the King's subjects," it refused to render justice. 
Louis XV. destroyed this beginning of revolution 
in its germ. During the night of January 17, 1771, 
all the members of the Parliament were arrested in 
their dwellings, and summoned to reply merely yes 
or no to an order to resume their functions. All 
responded negatively. They were at once declared 
unseated, and departed into exile. A new Parlia- 
ment, called the Maupeou Parliament, after the 
chancellor who had advised this coup d'Etat, took 
the place of the former one, and showed itself 
perfectly docile. As has been remarked by M. 
Th^ophile Lavall^e, the wheels of the governmental 
machine were so worm-eaten that even the organ of 
resistance, touched by the finger of a courtesan, a 
Du Barry, crumbled into powder. To the people, 
the magistrates seemed only privileged persons dis- 
credited by the trials of Lalli, Galas, and La Barre. 



THE PAVILION OF LUCIENNES 179 

Maupeou announced that justice would be rendered 
gratuitously, that appointments should no longer be 
hereditary, and that a new code of civil and criminal 
procedure would be drawn up. Voltaire, always the 
partisan of success, went into ecstasies over the 
glory of the chancellor, the author of this stroke, and 
celebrated it in an enthusiastic piece of verse : — 

" Oui, que Maupeou, tout seul, du dedale des lois 

Ait pu retirer la couronne, 
Qu'il I'ait seul rapportee au palais de nos rois, 
Voila ce que j'ai vu, voila ce qui m'etonne. 

J'avoue avec I'antiquite 
Que ses heros sont admirables ; 
Mais, par malheur, ce sont des fables ; 

Et c'est ici la vdrite." ^ 

Madame de Pompadour had overthrown the Jesuits. 
The Jansenists were crushed by Madame Du Barry. 
From his retreat at Ferney, Voltaire flattered the 
favorite with those refinements of adulation of which 
he had the monopoly. June 20, 1773, he wrote the 
following letter : — 

"Madame, — M. de Laborde tells me you have 



1 Yes, that Maupeou, alone, from the labyrinth of the laws 

Has been able to withdraw the crown, 
That he alone has returned it to the palace of our kings, 
This is what I have seen, this is what amazes me. 

I avow with antiquity 
That its heroes are admirable ; 
But, unfortunately, they are fables ; 

And this is the verity. 



180 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

ordered him to embrace me on both cheeks on your 
account : — 

" Quoi ! deux baisers sur la fin de ma vie ! 
Quel passeport vous daignez m'envoyer ! 
Deux 1 c'est trop d'un, adorable Egerie, 
Je serais mort de plaisir au premier.^ 

"He has shown me your portrait; do not be 
angry, Madame, if I have taken the liberty of 
returning it the two kisses: — 

" Vous ne pouvez pas empecher cet hommage, 
Faible tribut de quiconque a des yeux. 
C'est aux mortels d'adorer votre image, 
L'original etait fait pour les dieux.^ 

"I have heard several bits from M. de Laborde's 
Pandora ; they have seemed to me very well worthy 
of your protection. The favor shown to the real 
fine arts is the only thing which could enhance the 
brilliancy with which you shine. 

"Deign, Madame, to accept the profound respect 
of an old solitary whose heart has no longer hardly 
any sentiment but that of gratitude." 

Public opinion was less severe on the favorite 
than might be believed. People pardoned her for- 

1 What ! two kisses toward the end of my life 1 
What a passport you deign to send me ! 
Two ! that is one too many, adorable Egeria, 
I shall be dead of pleasure at the first one. 

2 You cannot prevent this homage, 

The feeble tribute of all who have eyes. 
'Tis for mortals to adore your image, 
The original was made for the gods. 



THE PAVILION OF LUCIENNE8 181 

tune, because she was, as they vulgarly said, a good 
girl, because "she had in her heart the affections of 
the common people, their natural attachments, the 
sentiment of family. "^ She went every fortnight to 
spend a day with her mother, whom she had trans- 
formed into a Marquise de Montrable, and provided 
with a lodging at the convent of Saint Elisabeth, a 
carriage, a country seat, and a little farm, called La 
Maison Rouge, near Lonjumeau. 

Madame de Pompadour, the personification of the 
middle class parvenue, had excited furious anger in 
all ranks of society. The Du Barry displeased less, 
because she was less haughty. Her triumph, more- 
over, was in harmony with an epoch when, as 
Chateaubriand has said, "court and city, men of 
letters, economists and encyclopedists, great lords 
and gentlemen, financiers and burghers, resembled 
each other, as witness the memoirs they have left us." 

More and more wearied of the rules of etiquette, 
the aged Louis XV. thought of nothing but living 
like a private gentleman, loving women, hunting, 
and good cheer as long as possible. All that was 
grand fatigued him. Versailles, too vast, too ma- 
jestic for him, harassed him like a prison. To the 
magnificent residence of Louis XIV. he greatly pre- 
ferred the little pavilion he had built in 1771, just 
beside the chateau of Luciennes, and which belonged 
to Madame Du Barry. 

There are monuments which are symbols. This 

1 Les Mattresses de Louis XV., by MM. de Goncourt. 



182 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

palace -boudoir, temple of a libertine divinity, repre- 
sents marvellously the close of the reign of Louis 
XV. Ledoux was the architect of this little master- 
piece, and its salons were adorned by the brushes of 
Joseph Vernet, Greuze, and Fragonard. Situated on 
an eminence from which one beheld a magnificent 
view, this square pavilion, with its five windows 
fronting in every direction, resembled a chateau of 
Alcina, the abode of an enchantress. It has a 
peristyle of four columns in the Grecian style and 
a Bacchanalian dance of children in low relief. 
The entrance is by a vestibule which served as a 
dining-room on great days. This is the room re- 
produced in the fine water-color of Moreau Jeune, 
now in possession of the Louvre Museum. The 
walls are of white marble. Capitals surrounded 
by gold display the united arms of Louis XV. and 
the favorite. In front of the vestibule are the 
tribunes for the Countess's musicians. This large 
hall opens on the square salon; the panels of the 
door were painted by Fragonard. On either side of 
the grand salon is another smaller one. In that on 
the right there is a set of four paintings by Vien, 
representing a sjrmbolic history of love in the heart 
of young girls; in that on the left, entirely adorned 
by mirrors which reflect a superb mantelpiece of 
lapis lazuli in the form of a tripod, Briard has 
painted on the ceiling the allegory of love in the 
country. 

When Louis XV. comes to Luciennes, he has no 



THE PAVILION OF LUCIENNES 183 

apartments separate from those of the Countess, with 
the exception of his dressing-room. Extremely care- 
ful of his person, he needs a private room in which 
to repair, if necessary, the little disorders of his 
toilet, and to have more powder put on when his 
hair requires it. 

What a little gem, what a charming trifle, is 
this marvellous pavilion! Cornices, bas-reliefs, pi- 
lasters, bits of jeweller's work, locks, window fas- 
tenings, — each detail is an object of art, a treasure. 
What refinements of luxury I What caprices, what 
puerilities, what freaks of ornamentation ! Chinese 
knick-knacks, statuettes in Dresden porcelain, coffers 
of ebony and ivory, lacquered furniture, screens cov- 
ered with birds of paradise of sparkling plumage, 
cages of paroquets, aviaries in goldtand silver fili- 
gree ! 

Amidst all these curiosities one perceives a little 
spaniel, white as snow, a Brazilian monkey, a small 
flame-colored parrot, and a Bengalese child, of a 
coppery black, with his brilliant eyes and bizarre 
accoutrements. This singular negro boy, this living 
toy, is Zamora, Zamora whom the Countess held at 
the baptismal font, with the Prince de Conti for the 
other sponsor, and whom Louis XV. amuses himself 
by appointing governor of the pavilion of Luciennes, 
by a decree countersigned by the Chancellor of 
France. They change this negro's costume as if he 
were a doll. Sometimes he is dressed as a savage, 
with red feathers, variegated garments, necklaces of 



184 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

beads and coral. Sometimes lie puts on a green 
frock coat, braided with gold, and accompanies the 
runner who, squeezed into a polonaise of sky blue 
cloth., brandishes, as he runs, a superb cane with a 
carved head. Sometimes he is in vest and breeches 
of pink satin, on those brilliant evenings vrhen from 
the tribunes of the vestibule resound the notes of 
violin, flute, and hunting-horn; where, amid great 
ladies in dazzling toilettes and nobles clad in velvet, 
precious stones, and blue ribbons, crystals, baskets of 
flowers, and innumerable lights, the Countess Du 
Barry beams as if in an operatic scene, as in an 
apotheosis of gallantry and sensual pleasure. 

But showy dress is not what best becomes her 
coquettish and sprightly person. She is still prettier 
and more piquant when she puts on the half fem- 
inine, half masculine uniform of the Queen's light 
cavalry. Then Dorat addresses her the following 
enthusiastic lines : — 

" Sur ton double portrait le spectateur perplexe, 
Charmante Du Barry, veut t'admirer partout; 
A ses yeux changes-tu de sexe, 
II ne fait que changer de gout. 
S'il te voit en femme, dans I'ame, 
D'etre homme 11 sent tout le plaisir ; 
Tu deviens homme, et d'etre femme 
Soudain il sent tout le desir." i 

1 Over thy double portrait, charming Du Barry, 
The perplexed spectator wishes to admire thee everywhere ; 
K thou changest thy sex before his eyes, 
He has only to change his taste. 



THE PAVILION OF LUCIENNES 185 

At Luciennes, Louis XV. lives like a banker in 
a small house. The Most Christian King has no 
longer any majesty. He puts on a simple white 
vest, and amuses himself, like an honest citizen, in 
gardening a little. He likes to walk underneath 
the lindens, and afterwards to sit on the terrace 
whence he can see at his feet the stream, which, 
making a double turn, winds like a horseshoe under 
the hill. On the horizon is Saint-Germain, the 
cradle of Louis XIV., Saint Denis, the burial-place 
of kings, whither he will presently go to rejoin his 
ancestors, and, in the misty distance, Paris, the 
carping, revolutionary city, which seems to menace 
him. Tired of Versailles, Louis XV. breathes the 
free air on this terrace and endeavors to forget: to 
forget the mistakes of his official and his secret 
diplomacy, to forget the first partition of Poland 
which is going on, the injunctions of England 
which, preventing France from aiding the Swedes 
or the Poles, forbid her fleets to enter either the 
Baltic or the Mediterranean; to forget, in fine, his 
own old age, and another decline not less afflicting, 
that of the French monarchy. The blas^ sovereign 
casts a glance of disenchantment at the present, a 
glance of keen anxiety toward the future. But here 
comes the Countess Du Barry with her arch face. 

If he sees thee as woman, in his soul 

He feels all the pleasure of being man ; 

Thou becomest man, 

And suddenly he is all desire to be a woman. 



186 LAST TEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

her provoking smile, lier rosy moutli wliich calls for 
kisses. Louis XY. cheers up in an instant. 

Was Madame Du Barry more immoral than Ma- 
dame de Pompadour ? I do not believe it. Was she 
more detrimental to France? I do not believe that 
either. Were the beginnings of the Marquise's 
favor more noble than those of the Countess ? Was 
the first more truly in love, more disinterested, than 
the second? For my part, I do not see much differ- 
ence. Nevertheless, I am tempted to find Madame 
de Pompadour more culpable than Madame Du 
Barry. Her husband was the better man of the 
two. M. Lenormand d'Etioles had not, like M. Du 
Barry, formed a wretched contract under the pretext 
of marriage; he loved his wife, he surrounded her 
with care and attentions; he had done absolutely 
nothing to merit the unjustifiable abandonment and 
unexpected treachery of which he was the victim. 

M. Du Barry, on the other hand, had willed his 
own fate. Whatever may be said about it, the 
Marquise was not in reality more of a grand lady 
than the Countess. One reflects that the aristocracy 
thought her vulgar. D'Argenson spoke of her con- 
temptuously; Richelieu saw in her nothing but a 
misplaced amusement, "which was not adapted to 
subsist worthily at court"; Voltaire, her regularly 
appointed flatterer, stigmatized her as a cackler, a 
grisette created for the opera or the seraglio. The 
Pompadour was elegant; the Du Barry was not less 
so. Each of them contrived to talk the language 
of Versailles, and to wear their clothes as well as 



THE PAVILION OF LUCIENNES 187 

the ladies of the highest nobility. D'Aiguillon, 
the favorite of the Countess, belonged to a family 
not less ancient than that of Choiseul, the favorite 
of the Marquise. Both of them obliged the aris- 
tocracy to accept their families. If one metamor- 
phosed her brother, Abel Poisson, into the Marquis 
de Marign}'-, the other married her nephew, the 
Viscount Adolphe Du Barry, to the daughter of 
the Marquis de Tournon, a relative of the Soubises 
and the Cond^s. One advantage the Countess cer- 
tainly had over the Marquise: no one could lay on 
her the responsibility for any war or for the selection 
of any general. 

The evil passions, hatred and rancor, ambition and 
cupidity, pride and the love of domination, were 
infinitely more active in the soul of Madame de 
Pompadour than in that of Madame Du Barry. One 
was a commercial, intriguing, calculating woman, 
mistress of herself, egotistic, haughty, vindictive. 
The other was a daughter of the people, not virtuous 
but not malicious, not lofty in sentiment but not 
spiteful, possessing all the defects of courtesans but 
also their thoughtlessness, prodigality, playfulness. 
In the gallery of the women of Versailles I shall 
place Madame Du Barry unhesitatingly above Ma- 
dame de Pompadour, because the Countess is credited 
by all her contemporaries with a quality that was 
lacking to the Marquise, a quality which expiates 
many faults, many shames, many vices, and without 
which no woman whatever can awaken sympathy, 
— that of good nature. 



XII 

THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 

LOUIS XV. foreboded his approaching death. 
Like all men who retain the habit of debauch- 
ery until they are old, he found more suffering than 
delight in sensual pleasure, more pain than joy. 
Expiating a few minutes of false rapture by long 
hours of ennui and discouragement, he experienced 
the painful pressure of fatigue, the remorse of the 
body, and of remorse, the fatigue of the soul. 

Count de Mercy- Argenteau wrote to Maria The- 
resa, June 16, 1773: "Although His Majesty's health 
has not grown worse within a month, yet it is 
observed that he is becoming more subject to vapors 
and ennui. His first liking for the favorite having 
been weakened by time, and this woman possessing 
infinitely few resources of mind or character, the 
King finds very slender entertainment with her, and 
even that is mixed up with inconveniences whose 
effects he constantly experiences." 

In his correspondence with his sovereign, the 
ambassador frequently returns to this incurable 
melancholy of Louis XV. He wrote, August 14th 

188 



THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 189 

of the same year: "The King is growing old, and 
from time to time seems to have regrets. He finds 
himself isolated, without aid or consolation from his 
children, without zeal, attachment, or fidelity from 
the bizarre assemblage composing his ministry, his 
society, his surroundings." And February 19, 1774: 
"From time to time the King begins to make 
remarks concerning his age, his health, and the 
frightful account that must one day be rendered to 
the Supreme Being for our employment of the life 
He has accorded to us in this world. These reflec- 
tions, occasioned by the death of some persons of his 
own age, who died almost before his eyes, have 
greatly alarmed those who retain the monarch in his 
present errors, and from that moment, everybody has 
thought it his duty to conceal such events as far as 
possible." People criticised the actions, the secret 
thoughts, of Louis XV., his occasional returns to 
religious practices, his more frequent visits to his 
daughter Louise, the Carmelite, the humility with 
which he had listened to a courageous prelate, Mon- 
seigneur Beauvais, Bishop of Senez, saying to him 
in a sermon delivered before the whole court : " Solo- 
mon, satiated with voluptuousness, tired of having 
exhausted, in the endeavor to revive his withered 
senses, every sort of pleasures that surround the 
throne, ended by seeking one of a new kind in the 
vile remnants of public license." 

Louis XV. was sixty-four years old. In his last 
days, as in those of his early youth, he was hesitat- 



190 LAST TEAES OF LOUIS XV. 

ing between vice and virtue when, April 28, 1774, 
he was attacked at the Little Trianon, by a malady 
which at once became alarming. The sick man was 
taken to the chateau of Versailles, and at once what 
has been so well named "the jobbing and traffic in 
the King's conscience " began. The Aiguillonists, 
the Barriens, as the partisans of the minister and the 
favorite were called, maintained that the illness was 
not serious, and would not listen to any mention of 
the sacraments. The friends of the Duke de 
Choiseul, on the other hand, urgently demanded 
that the King should receive extreme unction, which 
must be the signal for the dismissal of his mistress. 
Concerning this, the brothers Goncourt have made the 
judicious remark: "It happened, strangely enough, 
that the Aiguillon party, that of the devotees and 
the Jesuits, combined to prevent the communion of 
Louis XV., while the Choiseul party, that of the 
philosophers and unbelievers, combined to force this 
communion." The Aiguillonists trembled. The 
King's malady was extremely serious, being small- 
pox of the most dangerous description. If the old 
monarch should die, it was all up with their favor. 
If he should recover, he would this time become 
devout. In either case, Madame Du Bariy would 
be nobody. 

The courtiers, fearing contagion, did not come 
near the chamber of the royal invalid without alarm. 
One of them, M. de L^torieres, succumbed for noth- 
ing but opening the door and looking at the King 



TRE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 191 

two minutes. More than fifty persons caught it by 
merely passing through the gallery. The daughters 
of Louis XV., Mesclames Adelaide, Victoire, and 
Sophie, ga^'e at this time an admirable example 
of courage and filial piety. Although they had 
never had the smallpox, they heroically braved the 
scourge. While the Dauphin and his two brothers, 
the Counts of Provence and Artois, prudently with- 
drew, the three Princesses did not hesitate to shut 
themselves up in the chamber ^ of their deserted 
father. They remained there from the time his 
illness began until his death. 

The Archbishop of Paris, Monseigneur Cliristo- 
pher de Beaumont, paid a visit to the King, May 2. 
"As they were on the watch for everything," says 
Baron de Besenval in his Memoirs, "as soon as the 
Archbishop appeared, people saw Marshal de Riche- 
lieu hastily leave the King's apartment and go as far 
as the hall of the guards ^ to meet him ; there, draw- 
ing him aside, they sat down on a bench. It was 
noticed that the Marshal talked with great vehe- 
mence and animated gestures; although what he 
said could not be overheard, it was not difEcult to 
see that he was trying to deter him from proposing 
to administer the sacraments." The King did not 
make up his mind at once. Meanwhile, the sickness 

1 Room No. 126 of the Notice du Musee de Versailles, by M. 
Soulig. 

2 Room No. 120 of the Notice du Musee de Versailles, by M. 
Soulie. 



192 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

was growing worse. The physicians used the word 
"delirium" in the bulletin of May 3, a piece of 
frankness which exasperated the Duke d'Aiguillon. 
In the evening of May 4, Madame Du Barry was 
introduced into the sick man's chamber. "Ma- 
dame," he said to her, "I am ill; I know what I 
have to do. I will not renew the scenes of Metz; 
we shall have to part. Go to M. d'Aiguillon's 
house at Reuil. Be sure that I shall always have 
the tenderest affection for you." The next day, at 
three o'clock in the afternoon, the favorite left Ver- 
sailles, where she was never to reappear. 

Behold Louis XV. on his deathbed. In vain he 
entreats his courageous daughters to leave him; for 
the first time in their lives they disobey him. The 
old King, as Mercy-Argenteau writes to Maria 
Theresa, gives "many signs of repentance and 
resignation." He is repairing by a Clnristian end 
the -scandals of his long existence. In the night of 
May 5-6, he asks for the Abb^ Mondou, his con- 
fessor. He receives absolution, and at the first 
glimmer of dawn. May 6, he asks to have the sacra- 
ments brought. Showing extreme impatience for 
the priest's arrival, he sends M. de Beauvau several 
times to the window to see if the messenger of God 
is not on his way. At last the clergy approach with 
the sacraments. The royal invalid briskly throws off 
his bed coverings, and forces himself into a kneeling 
posture, leaning against the front of his bed. As the 
physicians try to induce him to cover himself up, 



THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 193 

he says: "When my great God does a wretch like 
me the honor to come to him, it is the least he can 
do to receive Him with respect." After the Com- 
munion, the grand almoner, Cardinal de La Roche- 
Aymon, reads aloud the public apology made by the 
sovereign to his people. "Although the King," 
exclaims the Cardinal, "owes an account of his 
conscience to God alone, he declares that he repents 
of having given occasion for scandal to his sub- 
jects." At these words, the dying man, in a voice 
broken by the last agony, said: " Repeat those words, 
Monsieur the almoner, repeat them." Let us own 
that if Louis XV. did not know how to live, he had 
at least the merit of knowing how to die v/ell. 

A candle burning in the King's chamber, which 
was to be extinguished at the same moment as the 
life of the King, was the signal agreed on for the 
measures to be taken and the orders given as soon 
as he should have breathed his last. The candle 
was put out at two o'clock in the afternoon of May 
10, 1774. Instantly a great tumult, comparable to 
a clap of thunder, shook the arches of Versailles. 
It was the crowd of courtiers leaving the ante- 
chambers of the dead man and noisily hastening 
to meet the new monarch. He who now called 
himself Louis XVI. threw himself spontaneously on 
his knees along with his wife. " My God ! " he 
exclaimed, " guide us, protect us ; we are too young 
to reign!" At six in the evening the new King 
and Queen departed for Choisy. Versailles was now 
only a desert. 



194 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

Count de S^gur says, in his Memoirs, concerning 
this sudden solitude : " Dazzled from infancy by the 
splendor of the throne, the extent of the royal 
power, a witness of the apparent zeal, the affected 
ardor, the continued eagerness of courtiers and those 
incessant arts of homage which resembled a sort of 
cult, the last agony and the death of the King 
caused me to shed tears. What was my surprise 
when, on hastening to Versailles, I found myself 
solitary in the palace, when I saw a general indiffer- 
ence and even a kind of joy pervading the city and 
the gardens! The setting sun was forgotten; all 
adorations were turning toward the rising one. Not 
yet laid in his tomb, the old monarch was already 
numbered among his motionless and silent prede- 
cessors. From that time his reign was ancient 
history, and people concerned themselves only about 
the future ; the old courtiers thought of nothing but 
how to keep their credit under the new reign, and 
the young ones of how to supplant them. The 
counterspell for the enchantments of a court is a 
change of reigns; then the heart is laid bare; all 
illusions end; the dead king is no longer more than 
a man, and often less. There is no dramatic stroke 
more moral than that, nor more adapted to make one 
reflect." 

At the moment when Louis XV. was in his agony, 
the Duke de Liancourt noticed that a valet of the 
wardrobe was in tears. "Well," said the Duke to 
him, "are you weeping for your master?" To 



THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 195 

which the domestic answered in a loud tone : " Oh ! 
not for that. If I am crying, it is for my poor 
comrade, who has never had the smallpox, and who 
will die of it." The corpse, rolled up hastily in the 
sheets of the bed, was thrown into a triple coffin of 
oak and lead. Several priests, in the mortuary 
chapel, were the only victims condemned not to 
abandon the remains of the miserable King. May 
12, the coffin was placed on a large coach. As is 
related by Baron de Besenval, "a score of pages and 
fifty mounted grooms, carrying torches, but like the 
carriages, not dressed in black, composed the entire 
procession, which set off at full trot at eight o'clock 
in the evening, and arrived at Saint Denis at eleven, 
amidst the gibes of the curious spectators on either 
side of the road, and who, under cover of the dark- 
ness, gave full scope to jesting, the dominant char- 
acteristic of the nation. They did not confine 
themselves to that ; epitaplis, placards, verses, were 
scattered broadcast, aspersing the memory of the 
late King." 

A letter written by the Countess de Boufflers to 
Gustavus III., July 20, 1774, shows what were then 
the sentiments of a part of the French nobility. 
"After his death," says the Countess, speaking of 
Louis XV., "he was abandoned, as usual, and even 
in a still more terrible manner on account of the 
nature of the disease; he was promptly interred; 
his corpse passed through the wood of Boulogne on 
its way to Saint Denis, about midnight. Cries of 



196 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

derision were heard as it passed by; people kept 
repeating: Ta'iaut! taiaut! as wlien a stag is seen, 
and in that ridiculous tone in which it is customary 
to pronounce it. If this circumstance is true, it 
shows great cruelty; but nothing is more inhuman 
than the indignant Frenchman, and, it must be 
agreed, he never had more cause to be so; never 
have a nation squeamish about honor, and a nobility 
naturally proud, received a more signal or less 
excusable insult than that given us by the late 
King when, not contented with the scandal he had 
given by his mistresses and his seraglio, at the age 
of sixty we saw him draw from the vilest class and 
the most infamous condition, a creature of the worst 
sort, in order to establish her at court, admit her to 
his table with his family, make her absolute mistress 
of favors, honors, and rewards, of politics and the 
laws, of which she has been the ruin, — misfortunes 
which one can hardly expect will be repaired. One 
cannot help regarding this sudden death and the 
dispersion of this infamous troupe as a stroke of 
Providence." 

If the nobility spoke thus, what must the bour- 
geoisie and the Parisian population, always so 
caustic and fault-finding, have said? Satirical verses 
in the style of those that follow were published : — 

" Te voila done, pauvre Louis, 
Dans un cercueil, a Saint-Denis I 
C'est 1^ que la grandeur expire. 
Depuis longtemps, s'il faut le dire, 



THE DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 197 

Inhabile k donner la loi, 
Tu portals le vain nom de roi, 
Sous la tutelle et sous I'empire 
Des tyrans qui regnaient pour toi. 

" £tais-tu bon ? C'est un problfeme 
Qu'on peut resoudre k peu de frais. 
Un bon prince ne fit jamais 
Le malheur d'un peuple qui I'aime, 
Et Ton ne peut appeler bon 
Un roi sans frein et sans raison, 
Qui ne vecut que pour lui-mgme. . . . 

" Faible, timide, peu sincere, 
Et caressant plus que jamais 
Quiconque avait su te deplaire, 
Au moment que de ta colere 
II allait ressentir les traits : 
Voila, je crois, ton caractere. 
Ami des propos libertins, 
Buveur fameux, et roi cdlfebre 
Par la chasse et par les catins : 
Voilk ton oraison funebre." ^ 



1 There thou art, poor Louis, 
In a coffin at Saint Denis ! 
There doth grandeur expire. 
For a long time, one must needs say. 
Incompetent to give the law, 
Thou hast borne the idle name of king 
Under the tutelage and the empire 
Of tyrants who reigned for thee. 

"Wert thou good ? It is a problem 

Which can easily be resolved. 

A good prince never causes 

The wretchedness of a people who love him. 



198 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

O kings! was not Bossuet in the right when he 
said that although seated on the throne you were 
none the less sitting under the hand and the supreme 
authority of God? What reflections there are to 
make over the inanity of the grandeurs of this 
world, the miseries of court life, the recantations 
and meanness of flatterers, the shameful calculations 
of ambition and interest, the ugliness of the human 
heart! What a lesson! that frightful, horrible, 
repulsive death struggle of this sovereign, who had 
exhausted all the enjoyments of luxury, all the 
refinements of pleasure, all the elegances of volup- 
tuousness! What a contrast between the boudoirs 
full of lights and flowers and perfumes, and the 
coffin where rotted "that indescribable something 
for which no language has a name "! What spectacle 
is at once more dismal and more instructive than 
the lamentable ending of this prince who had once 
been called the Well-Beloved? 



And one cannot call good 

A king without restraint or reason, 

Who lives for no one but himself. ... 

Feeble, timid, insincere, 

And caressing more than ever 

Him who had managed to displease thee, 

Up to the moment when of thy wrath 

He was about to feel the effects : 

That, I think, was thy character. 

Lover of loose speeches, 

Famous drinker, and king celebrated 

For hunting and for wantons : 

That is thy funeral oration. 



EPILOGUE 

THE SCAFFOLD OF MADAME DU BAEEY 

THE fatal year, 1793, has sounded. Nineteen 
years have elapsed since the death of Louis 
XV. How many changes ! What revolutions I No 
throne, no altars, no aristocracy. Versailles is a 
solitude. There are sick-beds in the gilded gal- 
leries. Sheep browse in the gardens. Grass grows 
between the flagstones of the courtyards. The 
fountains are dry. The marble statues, the bronze 
groups, are thrown down or mutilated. The greatest 
crime in all French history has just been accom- 
plished; the head of the son of Saint Louis, the 
Most Christian King, has fallen on the scaffold. 

What has become of Madame Du Barry in the 
tempest ? Where is that woman who contributed so 
greatly to the enfeebling of the monarchical prin- 
ciple, and, consequently, to the present catastrophes ? 
Since October, 1792, she has been in London. She 
has not emigrated, and it was only after having made 
herself all right with the authorities of the day that 
she went to England to prosecute legally the authors 
of the robberies committed at Luciennes. The guilty 

199 



200 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

persons have crossed the Channel, and Madame Du 
Barry is searching for them. 

But before speaking of this pursuit, let us go back 
a little and recall the fate of the favorite after the 
accession of Louis XVI. Exiled at first to a con- 
vent in the suburbs of Metz, the abbey of the 
Bernardines of Pont-aux-Dames, she received after 
a few months an authorization to return to her dear 
pavilion of Luciennes. Her affairs, which at first 
had been embarrassed on account of enormous debts, 
were nearly settled. She always lived in great 
luxury, with a numerous household. Many of her 
relations with the court had remained unbroken, and 
though it seems that she gave her royal lover more 
than one successor, she retained a sort of mundane 
veneration for his memory. Distinguished for- 
eigners always made a point of being presented to 
the late King's mistress. 

When the Emperor Joseph II. came to pay a visit 
to his sister, Marie Antoinette, he went to Luciennes 
and walked in the garden with the Countess Du 
Barry. His Imperial Royal and Apostolic Majesty 
offered her his arm. In her later years the Countess 
had made a conquest of an accomplished gentleman, 
the Duke de Coss^-Brissac, a true type of the great 
noble, heroically brave and exquisitely courteous. 
Not merely did the Duke take Madame Du Barry 
seriously, but he showed her as much attention and 
respect as to the highest placed lady in the king- 
dom. To enthusiastic admiration he unitQd th© 



THE SCAFFOLD OF MADAME DU BABRT 201 

most vivid and profound attacliment. As has been 
said by MM. de Goncourt, there is in this attach- 
ment of M. de Brissac such a bestowal of himself, 
such delicate attentions, such eagerness to oblige, so 
profound a worship, that it troubles and disconcerts 
one's judgment on the woman esteemed worthy of 
such a love. Still beautiful, Madame Du Barry 
thought herself destined to a happy and tranquil 
ending, since she had disarmed her enemies them- 
selves by her sweetness, gaiety, and good nature. 
Luciennes was still a delightful place. But the 
storm was rumbling in the distance, and the Coun- 
tess, always improvident, had reckoned without the 
revolutionary tide which was rising, rising inces- 
santly, and which was to submerge all. 

Madame Du Barry will abjure neither the court 
nor the monarchy. The woman of the people will 
remain a royalist, not forgetting that she is a coun- 
tess and has been the mistress of a king. In 1789, 
after the October Days, she had sheltered the body- 
guards at Luciennes and carefully tended their 
wounds. The Queen had thanked her for this 
courageous act, and the former favorite of Louis 
XV. had written to the wife of Louis XVI. a letter 
cited in the Memoirs of Count d'Allonville, in 
which she thus expressed herself : " These wounded 
youths have no other regret than that of not having 
died for a princess so worthy ol all homage as is 
^^«ur Majesty. What I have done for these heroes 
is tar less than they deserve. I console them, and I 



202 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XY. 

venerate their wounds when I think, Madame, that 
but for their devotion Your Majesty would perhaps 
be no more. 

"Luciennes is yours, Madame; was it not your 
benevolence which restored it to me? All that I 
possess came to me from the royal family: I have 
too much gratitude ever to forget it. The. late 
King, by a sort of presentiment, forced me to accept 
a thousand precious objects before removing me from 
his person. I had the honor to send you this treas- 
ure at the time of the meeting of the notables ; I 
offer it to you again, Madame, with eagerness. You 
have so many expenses to provide for, and number- 
less benefits to confer!" 

In 1791, Madame Du Barry had spent several days 
in Paris at the house of the Duke de Brissac. 
Thieves profited by her absence from Luciennes to 
enter the pavilion of the chateau and possess them- 
selves of the magnificent gems contained in the 
jewel cases of the Countess. Then they had carried 
their spoil across the Channel. The next year, the 
Duke de Brissac had been massacred at Versailles. 
He left a will in which, speaking of his daughter, 
Madame de Mortemart, whom he made his universal 
legatee: "I earnestly recommend to her a person 
who is very dear to me, and whom the misfortunes 
of the times may reduce to the greatest distress. 
My daughter will have a codicil from me which will 
indicate to her what I ordain on this subject." 

The codicil contained an important legacy to 



THE SCAFFOLD OF MADAME DU BARRT 203 

Madame Du Barry. "I beg lier," said the Duke, 
" to accept this feeble pledge of my sentiments and 
my gratitude, for which I am all the more her debtor 
because I was the involuntary cause of the loss of 
her diamonds; and if she ever succeeds in getting 
them back from England, those which remain lost, 
and the cost of the different journeys rendered neces- 
sary by the search for them, in addition to the reward 
to be paid, would amount to the actual value of this 
legacy. I entreat my daughter to make her accept 
it. My knowledge of her heart assures me of the 
exactitude with which she will acquit herself of it, 
whatever may be the charges with which my estate 
will be burdened by my testament and my codicil, 
it being my will that none of my other legacies shall 
be paid until this one has been entirely accom- 
plished." 

The theft of the jewels was to prove fatal to the 
Countess. She had been so imprudent, in this time 
of jealousies and hatreds, as to attract public atten- 
tion to her riches by posting on the walls of 
Luciennes and its environs a bill whereon might 
be read: "Two thousand louis reward: diamonds 
and jewels lost." Then followed an enumeration of 
the diamonds, pearls, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires. 
Greed was aroused. The village of Luciennes had 
its club; it was claimed there that the Countess 
possessed countless treasures, that incalculable riches 
were concealed in the pavilion, that it was the mine 
from which the royalists drew with full hands, that 



204 LAST YEAES OF LOUIS XV. 

the Countess was going to direct and pay the 
reactionaries. 

M. Sardou has said: "When History makes a 
drama, she makes it well." The true historic 
drama, that which is no fiction but reality, has its 
vicissitudes, its contrasts, its gradations. It has 
above all its traitors. Do you remember Zamora, 
that child of Bengal, whom the mistress of Luciennes 
had held at the baptismal font and whom she had 
overwhelmed with benefits, that little negro who 
carried a parasol over the favorite's head, and whose 
inky blackness threw into relief the snowy whiteness 
of the Countess's visage? Well, the miserable 
Zamora is a traitor. In league with Madame Du 
Barry's former steward, he is the accomplice of one 
Greive, who styles and signs himself "Official 
defender of the brave sans-culottes of Luciennes, 
friend of Franklin and of Marat, factionist and 
anarchist of the first rank, disorganizer of despotism 
in the two hemispheres for twenty years." This 
hideous crew pursues the Countess with its hatred. 
She is a prey that the tigers who scent the odor of 
blood will be sure to find the way to devour. 
Zamora has sworn that he will make his benefactress 
ascend the scaffold, and Zamora will keep his worci, 

Madame Du Barry had made four journeys to 
England in pursuit of those who stole her jewels. 
Her last stay on the other side of the Channel had 
lasted four months and a half, from the middle of 
October, 1792, to the beginning of March, 1793. 



THE SCAFFOLD OF MADAME DU BABUY 205 

Why did this woman, who certainly did not shine by 
her courage, conceive the fatal idea of returning to 
France? Was the fear of never seeing again the 
treasures hidden in the pavilion of Luciennes stronger 
than her sentiment of prudence ? Or rather, was not 
the victim dragged on by a sort of inexplicable 
fatality, by the vertigo, the fascination, of the abyss ? 
She leaves London, March 3, 1793, lands at Calais 
the 5th, is detained there until the 18th to await 
new passports, and arrives at Luciennes the 19th. 
She finds seals on the pavilion. Zamora and his 
accomplices, that band of infamous servants to whom 
Madame Du Barry had been so gentle, kind, and 
generous, ruthlessly continued their odious denun- 
ciations. The Convention rendered, June 2, a decree 
expressed in these terms: "The constituted authori- 
ties, throughout the whole extent of the Republic, 
shall be obliged to have seized and placed in arrest 
all persons notoriously suspected of incivism." Ma- 
dame Du Barry's persecutors availed themselves of 
this decree to arrest her. Once she has been released 
and reinstated in her pavilion. But hatred is not 
discouraged. The wretches take an address to the 
Convention in which, speaking in the name of " the 
brave sans-culottes of Luciennes," they call for 
the definitive arrest of a woman who, say they, " has 
been able, by means of her riches and her caresses 
learned at the court of a feeble and dissolute mon- 
arch, to escape, in spite of her notoriously incivic 
relations, from the Declaration of the Rights of Man, 



206 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

and lias made lier chateau the centre of liberticide 
projects against Paris." The Convention applauds 
this stupid language and felicitates the commune of 
Luciennes on its patriotism. The thing is done. 
Madame Du Barry is ruined. 

September 22, surrounded by gendarmes, she 
quits the pavilion of Luciennes, which she is never 
again to see. She is transferred to the prison of 
Sainte-Pelagie, where she is placed in the chamber 
that had been occupied by Queen Marie Antoinette. 
What funereal presentiments ! What alarms ! What 
dismal thoughts! In her prison, she who had been 
the mistress of Louis XV. could think of the corpse 
of her royal lover. A few days before, August 10, 
the Convention had executed its decree concerning 
the violation of the tombs of Saint Denis, of that 
Saint Denis which the favorite formerly beheld from 
the heights of the terrace of Luciennes. They had 
exhumed "these former kings and queens, princes 
and princesses." They had broken the coffins, and 
melted the lead of them. The corpse of Louis XV., 
like that of Louis XIV. and his predecessors, had 
been cast into the common pit. 

The Countess Du Barry shudders. Now it is her 
time to die. December 7, 1793, at nine o'clock in 
the morning, she appears all trembling before the 
revolutionary tribunal. Fouquier-Tinville is spokes- 
man, in virtue of his office as public prosecutor, and 
in his requisition he yields to what he calls "his 
indignation as an honest man and a patriot." He 



THE SCAFFOLD OF MADAME DU BARBY 207 

declaims in that cruel and inflated jargon, odious 
and grotesque, of which this infamous epoch has the 
secret. He declares that he " does not wish, through 
modesty, to lift the veil which should cover forever 
the frightful vices of the court." The modesty of 
Fouquier-Tinville ! . . . Several of the former do- 
mestics of Madame Du Barry, Zamora at their head, 
are cowardly enough to depose against her. The 
penalty of death is pronounced. The poor woman 
grows pale and totters. The gendarmes are obliged 
to support her so that she may not fall. She is to 
mount to-morrow the fatal cart, the bier of the 
living, as Barrdre calls it. 

Mad with terror, breathless, the condemned woman 
passes a night of anguish. She revolves every means 
of prolonging her existence for some hours, some 
minutes. She says she will make revelations, she 
will show at Luciennes the hiding-places of all her 
jewels, all her treasures. The public prosecutor 
sends a substitute to her cell. She details, like a 
woman who is afraid of forgetting something, all 
the items of her inventory, because she imagines that 
every word adds a second to her life. But the 
executioner is waiting. She must go. 

It is the 8th of December, 1793. Fifty-three days 
before, another woman, a queen, had come out of the 
same prison, the same chamber, to go likewise to 
execution. The cart was filthy. For a seat a 
board. On the board neither hay nor straw. Be- 
hind the victim, Sanson the executioner, holding the 



208 LAST TEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

ends of a thick cord which tied the condemned 
Queen's arms behind her. A poor comic actress 
had lent her a gown in which she could decently 
present herself at the scaffold. Well ! in this sorry- 
attire, amidst the yelling of the crowd, on a cold 
morning in October, the daughter of the Cassars had 
been more sublime, more majestic, than on the throne. 
Dressed in white, like a phantom, a little red on the 
cheekbones, but otherwise pale, the eyes injected, not 
with tears, but blood, the hair whitened by grief, she 
was to the very end calm, serene, magnanimous, and 
regarded with mildness and compassion the infernal 
tumult that surrounded her. For one instant only 
did her impassible features betray emotion. When 
the cart was passing rue Saint Honor^, opposite the 
Oratory, a little child in its mother's arms threw a 
kiss to the Queen, and at this salute of innocence 
Marie Antoinette wept. On arriving at Calvary, 
she sadly contemplated that sacrilegious spot where 
her husband had been executed, that accursed spot 
where, twenty years before, had occurred a catas- 
trophe which was an omen. She turned her eyes 
toward that cemetery of the Madeleine where the 
victims were then entombed, and where her own 
headless body was soon to be placed. Then she cast 
a last glance toward the Tuileries, which to her had 
been so fatal, the Tuileries, her first prison, and, 
happening to step on the foot of the executioner, she 
said to him with queenly politeness: "Sir, I beg 
your pardon." She died, but it was the death of 



THE SCAFFOLD OF MADAME DU BARBY 209 

heroines and martyrs. She died, but the purple of 
her blood has covered her with a second royal 
mantle, and her head, cut off, is resplendent with 
the flames of an aureole which will shine from age 
to age. She died, but the pure, the radiant angels 
have borne her beautiful soul to heaven. 

Madame Dli Barry does herself justice. She feels 
that she cannot have so magnificent a death. The 
apotheosis of the saint is not for her, but the expia- 
tion of the sinner. The wife of Louis XVI. had 
looked death in the face. The mistress of Louis 
XV. will not have that courage. She is frightened, 
she sobs, she utters such heartrending cries that it is 
much if the Terror itself, the unpitying Terror, is 
not for the first time moved to compassion. 

As the cart passes in front of the Palais Royal, 
the victim perceives the balcony of a millinery 
establishment from which a number of working- 
women are looking at the funereal procession. She 
recognizes the house ; it was there she worked as a 
milliner's apprentice when a very young girl. Alas ! 
why did she become Madame the Countess Du Barry? 
Her countenance is by turns of a livid pallor or a deep 
red. She struggles so between the executioner and 
his two assistants that they can hardly keep her on 
her bench. Her cries redouble. "Life! life!" she 
says ; " only let them leave me life, and I will give 
all my property to the nation." Then, from the 
crowd, a man replies : " You would only give the 
nation what belongs to it, since the tribunal has 



210 LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. 

just confiscated your property." A charcoal ]3edcller, 
standing in front of this man, turns round and gives 
him a slap in the face. The victim begins anew her 
supplications. " My friends, " she cries, " my friends, 
I have never done harm to any one ! In the name of 
heaven, I beg you, save me ! " Who knows ? the 
stocking-knitters themselves, the furies who lick the 
guillotine, are perhaps going to be affected by these 
accents of the woman of the people. This time it is 
not a queen who is about to die ; it is a countess, but 
a countess who was first a working-woman. The 
horses are whipped up, the end is hastened to stop 
the compassion of the crowd. At last the cart 
arrives at the place which was formerly called 
Place Louis XV. ; there where once rose the statue 
of the monarch, the scaffold is erected where they are 
going to execute his mistress. It is half-past four 
o'clock. "Help! help!" she cries. "Mercy! mercy! 
Monsieur Executioner! Once more. ..." The 
knife falls. It is all over with Madame Du Barry. 
Had we not reason to say, at the beginning of 
this study, that history is a long funeral oration? 
Ah! as Virgil has said, there are tears in things, 
and all that is mortal affects our soul: — 

Sunt lacrymce rerum^ et mentem mortalia tangunt. 

If we confine ourselves to the surface of the ages, 
we remain cold, indifferent; but if we descend to 
their depths, if we penetrate the secret of souls, if 
we lend an attentive ear to voices from beyond the 



THE SCAFFOLD OF MADAME DU BABRY 211 

tomb, to the groanings, the cries of anguish issuing 
from the abyss of the past, we are possessed by an 
invincible sadness, a salutary melancholy. We per- 
ceive, in the language of Bourdaloue, " that all these 
grandeurs on which the world glorifies itself and 
the pride of man is fed, that this birth on which 
they pique themselves, this credit which flatters 
them, this authority of which they are so proud, 
these successes of which they vaunt, these goods in 
which they glory, these charges and dignities of 
which they take advantage, this beauty, valor, repu- 
tation which they idolize, is nothing but a lie." 
The lessons of history are neither less instructive 
nor less eloquent than the best sermons of the 
preachers. All destinies have their conclusion and 
all deaths their instruction. One feels surrounded 
by a host of phantoms, sometimes livid, sometimes 
bloody, whose sepulchral aspect causes a shudder, 
and whose dismal voices say : " Remember, man, that 
thou art dust, and unto dust thou must return. — 
Memento^ homo, quiapulvises, et in pulverem reverteris. 

Behold the women of the court of Louis XV. ; 
behold the royal mistresses, once so flattered, who 
appear for the last time, and one after another take 
up the word I 

"I," says the Countess de Mailly, " when banished 
by an earthly king, found my consolation at the feet 
of the King of heaven. I have wept sincerely for my 
faults, and God, in His mercy, has deigned to grant 
me time for repentance." 



212 LAST TEAES OF LOUIS XV. 

"I," says tlie Countess de Vintimille, "had barely 
crossed the threshold of that fatal chateau of Ver- 
sailles, when stricken as by a thunderbolt, I died in 
giving birth to the infant of my crime." 

"I also," says the Duchess de Ch^teauroux, "I 
passed like the grass of the field which withers in a 
day. Crushed by affronts and anguish, I lost vny 
miserable sceptre, and at the moment when I seized 
it again, I died very young, I died enwrapped in my 
shameful triumph as in the most sorry of shrouds." 

"And I, "says the Marquise de Pompadour, "never 
tasted a single instant of real happiness in all my 
twenty years of power. I had everything except the 
esteem which cannot be bought. At the bottom of 
my intrigues and pretended pleasures I found only 
nothingness. My conscience spoke louder than my 
flatterers; I felt my own wretchedness. My life, 
brilliant externally, was inwardly replenished with 
sorrow and darkness. A sorceress had predicted it 
to me: I died of nothing but chagrin." 

"I," says the Countess Du Barry, the last of the 
royal mistresses, she whose execution is as it were the 
summing up, the symbol of the expiations, "I have 
paid very dear for the enjoyments of luxury and sen- 
suality; I knew neither how to live nor how to die. 
At an epoch when heroism was a common thing, I 
weakened, I was afraid, I shuddered on the scaffold! " 

After the favorites, it is the turn of the sovereign 
whose fatal love was the cause of all their misfor- 
tunes. 



THE SCAFFOLD OF MADAME DU BABEY 213 

"I," he says, "have seen, like the Preacher, all 
that is done under the sun, and I have found that 
all is vanity and vexation of spirit. I became 
voluntarily the victim of guilty passions which, 
when once the inebriation was over, left nothing in 
the soul but a painful stupor and a cruelly felt void. 
I was disgusted with others and with myself. I 
did not believe in the prestige of my own crown, 
and in spite of my riches, my power, my ability to 
realize all my caprices, there was incarnated in 
me that gnawing evil, ennui. If my weaknesses 
have given scandal, horrible has been the chas- 
tisement. I have been punished in myself and 
punished in my race, punished as man, punished 
as king." 

When, in the silence of mind and heart one has 
just listened to these lessons of history and death, 
one reflects. After meditating on instructions so 
austere, one finds the problems of human destiny 
less insoluble, and recognizing the point from which 
things must be viewed, one discovers, as Bossuet 
says, that what at first seems confusion is in fact 
only concealed art, an ensemble of combinations 
admirably ordained by Providence. Then earthly 
grandeurs appear in their true light, and one feels 
better, calmer, less ambitious, less disposed to com- 
plain of the inequalities of fate. The shades of 
princes and princesses, of great lords and ladies, 
have their mysterious language, and all combine to 
say in unison these words from the Imitation of 



214 LAST YEABS OF LOUIS XV. 

Christy the most affecting and purest of all books, 
if the Gospel did not exist : — 

" It is vanity to amass perishable riches and place 
one's hope in them. 

"It is vanity to seek for honors and elevate one's 
self to the chief places. 

" It is vanity to follow the desires of the flesh and 
to love that which in the end will merit rigorous 
chastisements. 

"It is vanity to desire long life and to be so little 
concerned to have it good. 

" It is vanity to think only of present things and 
not to foresee those that are to come. 

" It is vanity to love that which passes so quickly, 
and not to be eager to gain heaven where joy endures 
forever." 



INDEX 



Adelaide, Madame, 146, 167, 191. 

Ageii, Duke d', his words concern- 
ing Madame Louise, 111. 

Argensou, Marquis d', his words 
prophetic of revolution, 24. 

Artois, Count d', his character, 144, 
145, 174, 191. 

Atheism in France, Walpole's 
words concerning, 68, 72; Dide- 
rot's words concerning, 71. 

Barbier, quoted, 68. 
Beaumarcliais, 26 ; the hero of the 

day, 27 ; censured by the court, 

27, 28. 
Beaumont, Christopher de, Arch- 
bishop of Paris, visits Louis XV. 

during the King's last illness, 

191. 
_Beauvais, Abbe' de, 20. 
Boufflers, Duke de, 52. 
Boufflers, Madame de, 56; her 

words at death of Louis XV,, 

195, 196. 
Breteuil, Baron de, 84. 
Brissac, M. de, see Cosse-Brissac, 

Duke de. 
Broglie, Count de, engaged in 

secret diplomacy, 83, 84. 
Buff on, his words concerning love, 

47-50. 

Campan, Madame, quoted, 79; 
reads to Madame Louise, 105, 
106; visits Madame Louise at 
Saint Denis, 110 ; her words con- 
cerning dinners of royal family, 
146; her words concerning Ma- 
dame Sophie, 147. 



Carmelite convent at Saint Denis, 
the, 107 et seq. 

Catherine II., Czarina, 58; Dide- 
rot's adoration of, 71. 

Chamfort, his definition of love, 
46. 

Chartres, Duke de, 155. 

Chateaubriand, his words concern- 
ing society during last years of 
Louis XV., 87, 181. 

Chateauroux, Duchess de, quoted, 
212. 

Choiseul, Duchess de, her salon, 
54; her sound sense, 54; her 
criticism of Rousseau, 54-56; 
her purity, 56; words of Wal- 
pole concerning, 56. 

Choiseul, Duke de, character of, 
88, 89; his enemies, 89, 97; his 
attitude toward Madame Du 
Barry, 101-104 ; his power weak- 
ening, 104; meets Marie Antoi- 
nette, 132; his downfall, 151- 
155 ; exiled, 155, 156. 

Church, a revolution forming 
against, 25. 

Clergy of France during last years 
of Louis XV., 18-21. 

Clotilde, Madame, 145. 

Cosse-Brissac, Duke de, his attach- 
ment to Madame Du Barry, 200, 
201 ; massacred, 202 ; his legacy 
to Madame Du Barry, 202, 203, 

D'Aiguillon, 187, 190. 

D'Alembert, 51 ; his love for Made- 
moiselle de Lesi^inasse, 62, 67. 

Dauphin, the, marriage of, to Marie 
Antoinette, 121; letter to, from 



215 



216 



INDEX 



Marie Antoinette, 121; naeets 
Marie Antoinette, 132; celebra- 
tion of his marriage, 136-142; 
his character, 144; his hostilitj'- 
to Choiseul, 154, 191 ; his words 
at death of Louis XV., 193; de- 
parts for Choisy, 193. 

Deer Park, 80, 85, 90, 98. 

Deffand, Marquise du, the salon of, 
57, 60-63; compared with Ma- 
dame Geoffrin, 60; her blind- 
ness, 60 ; her wit and satire, 62 ; 
her letters, 62; Voltaire's fear 
of, 62 ; her religious inclinations, 
65 ; her words on life and death, 
65, 66 ; her affection for Horace 
Walpole, 66; her criticism of 
Madame Louise, 111. 

Desalleurs, Count, 84. 

Diderot, his words concerning 
atheism, 71; his adoration for 
the Empress Catherine II., 71. 

Du Barry, Count Jean, 94, 95. 

Du Barry, Count William, his mar- 
riage, 95. 

Du Barry, Madame, Louis XV. 's 
passion for, 9, 42; suit between 
heirs of, 91-93 ; her birth, 92 ; her 
early years, 93 ; called Mademoi- 
selle I'Ange, 94; delights Louis 
XV., 94; her marriage, 95; 
becomes mistress of Louis XV., 
95; presented at Versailles, 97, 
98; her apartments at Ver- 
sailles, 98; her house in the 
city and her riches, 99; her 
personal charms, 99, 100; Wal- 
pole's words concerning, 100, 
101; her j)osition at court, 101- 
104; her attitude toward Duke 
de Choiseul, 101-104; her words 
concerning Madame Louise, 112 ; 
her relations to Marie Antoinette, 
150 et seq. ; her victory over 
Choiseul, 151-155; her attitude 
towards Parliament, 177, 178; 
letter to, from A^oltaire, 179, 180 ; 
feelings of the people for, 180, 
181; makes her mother Mar- 



quise de Montrable, 181; com- 
pared with Madame de Pompa- 
dour, 179, 181, 186, 187 ; her life 
after death of Louis XV., 200 et 
seq. ,■ her conquest of the Duke 
de Cosse'-Brissac, 200, 201; shel- 
ters royal body-guards at Lu- 
ciennes, 201; her letter offering 
hospitality of Luciennes to Marie 
Antoinette, 201, 202; her pavil- 
ion at Luciennes robbed, 202, 
203 ; her trips to England, 199, 
204; betrayed by her servants, 
204-206; taken from Luciennes 
to prison, 206; appears before 
the revolutionary tribunal, 206, 
207; condemned to death, 207; 
her execution, 209, 210, 212. 
Durfort, Marquis de, demands 
Marie Antoinette for the Dauphin, 
121. 

Egmont, Countess d', 42. 

Elisabeth, Madame, 145. 

Eon, Chevalier d', 83. 

Exiinay, Madame d', her words con- 
cerning modesty, 47. 

Etioles, Lenormand d', 186. 

Encyclopedists, Madame Geoffrin's 
attitude towards, 64. 

Fouquier-Tinville, 206, 207. 
Francis, Emperor, 116, 117. 

Gassner, forecasts future of Marie 
Antoinette, 117. 

Genet, Mademoiselle, afterwards 
Madame Campan; see Madame 
Campan. 

Geoifrin, Madame, her salon, 57-60; 
her husband, 57; her diaracter 
and manners, 59; the greatest 
nobles pay court to her, 58 ; her 
visits to Warsaw and Vienna, 58, 
117, 118; Walpole's admiration 
for, 59, 60; compared with Ma- 
dame du Deffand, 60; her rela- 
tions toward the Encyclopedists, 
64; meets Marie Antoinette, 118. 



INDEX 



217 



Gleichen, Baron de, 151, 152. 

Goethe, his words concerning mar- 
riage of Marie Antoinette, 128. 

Goezman, Counsellor, 26, 27. 

Guibert, M. de. Mademoiselle de 
Lespinasse's love for, 67. 

Gustavus III. of Sweden, letters to, 
41-43, 177. 

Henriette, Madame, 86. 

Joseph II., Emperor, his visit to 
Luciennes, 200. 

Laborde, M. de, 179; his Pandora, 
180. 

La Bruyire, quoted, 68. 

La Harpe, 51. 

La Marck, Countess de, 43. 

Lamballe, Princess de, 173. 

Lespinasse, Mademoiselle de, her 
salon, 57, 63; sketch of, 62, 63; 
her unhappy love, 67. 

Lorraine, Mademoiselle de, ac- 
corded preference by Louis XV. 
in the minuet at Marie Antoi- 
nette's marriage festivities, 137- 
140. 

Louise of France, Madame, in the 
Convent of the Carmelites, 104; 
her preparation for convent life, 
105, 106; obtains permission to 
enter the religious state, 107; 
letters to, from the King and 
her sisters, 107-110; enters con- 
vent at Saint Denis, 107, 108 ; vis- 
ited by Madame Campan, 110; 
criticisms of. 111 ; her life of re- 
ligious devotion, 112-114; visited 
by Marie Antoinette, 133 ; takes 
the habit of the Carmelites, 147, 
148. 

Louis XV., the court during last 
years of, 2 et seq. ; his old age, 9 
et seq. ; a pater dedicated to, 9; 
feelings of the people towards, 
12, 85, 86 ; a type of the ancient 
regime, 12 ; his character, 12-14 ; 



his passion for Madame Du 
Barry, 9; his victory over Par- 
liament, 12, 13, 25 ; his words to 
Marshal de Richelieu, 20; his 
horror of the magistracy, 23; 
feelings of the middle classes for, 
30; love during reign of, 45-50; 
suffers family bereavements, 79, 
80; his attention to Marie Lec- 
zinska in her last illness, 80; 
urged to lead a virtuous life, 80 ; 
his apathy and indifference, 81, 
82, 88 ; his secret intriguing pol- 
icy, 82-84; his lack of will, 85; 
his personal appearance during 
later years, 85; the personifica- 
tion of his epoch, 87; makes 
Madame Du Barry his mistress, 
94, 95; closes establishment at 
Deer Park, 98; gives Madame 
Du Barry a house in the city, 99 ; 
grants Madame Louise permis- 
sion to enter the religious state, 
107; his letters to Madame 
Louise, 107, 108; meets Marie 
Antoinette, 132; accords Made- 
moiselle de Lorraine preference 
in the minuet at Marie Antoi- 
nette's marriage celebration, 
137-140; his affection for Marie 
Antoinette, 145; his reply to 
Choiseul, 152; dismisses Choi- 
seul, 155 ; at the pavilion of Lu- 
ciennes, 181-183, 185; forbodes 
his death, 188, 189; his melan- 
choly, 188; criticised, 189; taken 
ill with small-pox at the Little 
Trianon, 190; urged to receive 
extreme unction, 190; on his 
death-bed, 192; receives com- 
munion, 192, 193; dies, 193; 
Count de Segur's words at death 
of, 194; his burial, 195; public 
indignities to corpse of, 195, 196 ; 
satirical verses on, 196, 197 ; his 
words concerning his own life, 
213. 
Love during reign of Louis XV., 
45-50; Chamfort's definition of, 



218 



INDEX 



46; Buffon's words concerning, 

47-50. 
Little Trianon, the, 190. 
Luciennes, pavilion of, 181-186, 

199, 200, 202. 
Luxembourg, Mar^chale de, 51; 

her position in society, 52-54; 

fascinates Rousseau, 53 ; her 

manners and conversation, 53, 

54. 

MacMahon, Julienne de, 113. 

Magistracy of France during last 
years of Louis XV., 22-28; hor- 
ror of Louis XV. for, 23. 

Mailly, Countess de, quoted, 211. 

Maria Theresa, Empress, 58; her 
character, 115, 162, 163; her in- 
struction of Marie Antoinette, 
116; consults Gassner concern- 
ing future of Marie Antoinette, 
117 ; forms Marie Antoinette 
after manner of the court of 
France, 118 ; her sorrow at part- 
ing with Marie Antoinette, 121 ; 
her Rule to he Read Every Month, 
125, 126 ; urges Marie Antoinette 
to treat Madame Du Barry def- 
erentially, 157, 160; her corre- 
spondence with Count de Mercy- 
Argenteau, 162 et seq. ; her 
jealous watchfulness, 167, 168; 
her exhortations to Marie An- 
toinette, 168-172; her tenderness, 
170. 

Marie Antoinette, 104; her birth, 
115; her childhood, 116 et seq.; 
loses her father, 117 ; her future 
forecast by Gassner, 117 ; trained 
to the manner of the court of 
France, 118; her beauty, 119; 
her marriage arranged, 120, 121 ; 
her letter to the Dauphin, 121; 
leaves Vienna, 122 ; chanson ad- 
dressed to, 123; superstitious pre- 
sentiments concerning, 124 ; sees 
France for the first time, 127; 
the symbolical ceremony of de- 
livery of, 128, 129; arrives at 



Strasburg, 130; Prince Louis de 
Rohan's address to, 130, 131; 
her route to Paris, 131-133; 
meets Duke de Choiseul, the 
Dauphin, and Louis XV., 132; 
visits Madame Louise, 133; ar- 
rives at Versailles, 134; descrip- 
tion of, by Bachaumont, 135, 136 ; 
festivities at her marriage, 136- 
142 ; her reception by the French 
people, 143; her affection for 
Louis XV., 145; her apartment, 
145; her daily Ufe, 145, 146; 
witnesses ceremony of the taking 
of the veil by Madame Louise, 
147, 148; the object of ill-feeling, 
149, 150; her relations to Ma- 
dame Du Barry, 150 et seq.; 
advised to treat Madame Du 
Barry deferentially, 157, 160; 
her repugnance for Madame Du 
Barry, 150, 159; her simple, 
child-like nature, 164, 165; sur- 
rounded by enemies, 149, 150, 
166; spied upon, 166, 167; lec- 
tured by her mother, Maria The- 
resa, 168, 169 ; her filial devotion, 
171; the idol of the court, 172, 
176; dances in apartments of, 
173; goes to Choisy with the 
Dauphin, 193; invited by Ma- 
dame Du Barry to come to 
Luciennes, 201, 202; death of, 
207, 208. 

Marie Leczinska, 79; last iUness 
and death, 80, 95. 

Maupeou Parliament, see Parlia- 
ment, Maupeou. 

Maximilian, Archduke, serves as 
proxy for the Dauphin in mar- 
riage of Marie Antoinette, 121. 

Mercy- Argenteau, Count de, 157; 
urges Marie Antoinette to treat 
Madame Du Barry deferentially, 
158, 159 ; his correspondence with 
Maria Theresa, 162 et seq.; his 
character, 163, 164. 

Middle classes in France during last 
years of Louis XV., 29-33; their 



INDEX 



219 



feelings toward Louis XV., 30; 

religious sentiment among, 32. 
Miropoix, Marechale de, 56; her 

criticism of Madame Louise, 111. 
Montesquieu, his words concerning 

the ruling classes of France, 24. 
Montrahle, Marquise de, 181. 

Nobility of France during last years 
of Louis XV., 15-17 ; intimacy of, 
with men of letters, 51. 

Ogny, M. d', 83. 
Olbach, Baron d', 74. 

Pandora, Lahorde's, 180. 

Paris, salons of, see Salons of Paris. 

Parliament, victory of Louis XV. 
over, 12, 13; the Maupeou, 25, 
178, 179. 

Pater, dedicated to Louis XV., 9. 

Penthievre Duke de, 173. 

People, of France during last years 
of Louis XV., 34-39; La Bru- 
y^re's words concerning, 34; Ma- 
sillon's words concerning, 34. 

Philosophers, the, during last years 
of Louis XV., 68-76; their posi- 
tion in society, 69, 70 ; Walpole's 
words concerning, 70, 73, 74 ; their 
gravity, 73. 

Place Louis XV., catastrophe of, 
142, 143. 

Poisson, Abel, 187. 

Political women, see Women, polit- 
ical. 

Pompadour, Madame de, compared 
with Madame Du Barry, 179, 181, 
186, 187; her unhappiness, 212. 

Poniatowski, Stanislas, 58. 

Provence, Count de, his character, 
144, 191. 

Richelieu, Marshal de, 100, 191, 192. 
Rohan, Prince Louis de, his address 

to Marie Antoinette, 130, 131. 
Rousseau, his Nouvelle-H^loise, 49- 

51 ; fascinated by the Marechale 



de Luxembourg, 53 ; the Duchess 
de Choiseul's criticism of, 54-56. 
Rule to he Read Every Month, 
Marie Theresa's, 125, 126. 

Saint-Germain, Count de, 83. 

Saint-Priest, M. de, 84. 

Salons of Paris, 51 et seq. 

Segur, Count de, quoted, 86, 87; 
his words concerning society 
during last years of Louis XV., 
88 ; his words at death of Louis 
XV., 194. 

Society in France during last years 
of Louis XV., Chateaubriand's 
words concerning, 87 ; Count de 
Segur's words concerning, 88. 

Society of the Moment, The, 48. 

Sophie, Madame, 146, 147, 191. 

Tarouka, Duke de, his wager with 
the Empress Maria Theresa, 115. 
Trianon, the Little, 190. 

Vergennes, M. de, 84. 

Vermond, Abbd de, instructor of 
Marie Antoinette, 120. 

Versailles, during last years of 
Louis XV., 9-11; after death 
of Marie Leczinska, 79 ; Madame 
Du Barry's apartments at, 98; 
deserted, 199 ; too vast for Louis 
XV., 181. 

Victoire, Madame, 146, 147, 191. 

Vintimille, Countess de, quoted, 
212. 

Voltaire, 51; his fear of Madame 
du Deffand, 62, 68; his show of 
religious devotion, 71, 72; his 
letter to Madame Du Barry, 179, 
180. 

Walpole, Horace, letters of, quoted, 
11, 51, 52, 56, 59, 68 ; Madame du 
Deffand's affection for, 66; his 
words concerning the philoso- 
phers, 70, 73, 74 ; his words on 
atheism, 68, 72; his retirement 



220 



INDEX 



to Chartreuse, 74; his words 
concerning Madame Du Barry, 
100, 101. 
Women of the court of Louis XV., 
lessons of their lives, 211-214. 



Women, political, in France during 
last years of Louis XV., 40-44. 

Zamora, 183, 184; a traitor, 204, 
205. 



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